[Linux-aus] Country-wide communication

[Pia Smith]

Hi Bret,

We have been speaking about this, and had decided we wanted to make an
online system for voting. What you've detailed here pretty muchs sums it
up. If anyone knows of a good backend to this please let me know, as a
major web site reconstruction is currently being planned.

Thanks all
Pia

On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 13:41, Bret Busby wrote:
> 
> Apart from my previous reference to holding international converstaions 
> using email, I have also been involved in voting in international polls 
> and elections, using the Internet.
> 
> If these can be done via the Internet, internationally, they should be 
> able to be done within and across Australia.
> 
> It could be a good way of getting people all over the country involved 
> in elections and determining policies and direction of the organisation, 
> and, could takes such things as the annual elections, away from the 
> conferences.
> 
> It also means that general meetings, including AGM's, can be done 
> online, without the need for physical presence at AGM's etc.
> 
> It was via the use of "forums", set up as mailing lists, with agendas, 
> and fixed time periods for discussion and voting, and login-based 
> website polls, with each voter having a unique username/password 
> combination (username may have been email address).
> 
> It was a means of having discussions and making decisions within a set 
> timeframe, and it appears to have been an effective way of doing it.
> 
> The polls were constructed to show who had voted, but not how any 
> particular person had voted, only the results of each poll, to preserve 
> the privacy of each vote. The polls were also constructed, so that any 
> voter could only vote once, unless a defect was found with the poll, in 
> which case a voter (or all voters) would be advised, the poll corrected, 
> and previous votes annulled to enable renewed votes.
> 
> The same technique could be used for both committee discussions and 
> voting, and for general membership discussions and voting.
> 
> And, it could overcome problems of distance and timezones. It did, 
> internationally, involving people from each continent, and from various 
> countries within each continent.
> 
> -- 
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> ..............
> 
> "So once you do know what the question actually is,
>  you'll know what the answer means."
> - Deep Thought,
>   Chapter 28 of 
>   "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
>   A Trilogy In Four Parts",
>   written by Douglas Adams, 
>   published by Pan Books, 1992 
> ....................................................
> 
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