response 94 of 126:

Dec 2 22:06 UTC 1998

I have a question or two which I might like to put forth to the 
candidates.  Should I just start a new coop item for each question?
It would seem redundant for me to pose the question in each candidate's
campaign item, assuming they have one.
 
Or should there just be one free-for-all ask-the-candidates item?
 
I'm seeking a little guidance on structure here.

response 96 of 126:

Dec 3 00:18 UTC 1998

Re #91-93: The same thought (appropriateness of me being election czar
and simultaneously a candidate, at least from the point of view of
appearance) occurred to me. It's happened twice before though, and
nobody voiced any concerns, so I let it ride. From a practical point of
view, in terms of the security of the balloting, I don't think it makes
any difference who the election official is. The votes are stored
online, source to vote program is accessible to any staff member, and
any vote-tampering that I could do could also be done by any root. So it
all boils down to trusting the roots, regardless of who's officially "in
charge".

If there's a feeling of discomfort with the arrangment, though, I'd be
quite willing to step aside and let some other staffer take over.

Re resp:94 - I like the idea of one free-for-all ask-the-candidates
item. Whenever there's an election, I always like to put a pointer to a
discussion item on the ballot and in the motd, and that would give me an
item to point to. (I could put pointers to all candidates' statement
items, but that would bloat things a bit, I think.)

response 98 of 126:

Dec 3 12:15 UTC 1998

  Yes--it gets forwarded to her.

response 100 of 126:

Dec 3 18:13 UTC 1998

Yes, if you go there, you might never get out.

Hm, I voted and so got a copy of my own message. I wonder if the problem
was that my script invoked sendmail directly in a tight loop. Does
sendmail have some anti-spam measure in place that rejects rapid-fire
mail from the same address to a bunch of different users?

response 102 of 126:

Dec 3 20:44 UTC 1998

In any case, I think I'll resend the mail by a different method, as my 
first method seems not to have worked.

response 104 of 126:

Dec 4 21:45 UTC 1998

I didn't get it, either, and I had voted.

response 106 of 126:

Dec 5 13:04 UTC 1998

I also had voted when Colleen was a candidate, & didn't get John's mail.

I have no problem with John's running the election.  If we're going to trust
people with root, they have the ability to diddle the voting whoever actually
runs the election.  My experience also indicates that John seeks out someone
else to verify the actual count.

response 108 of 126:

Dec 5 14:30 UTC 1998

(And re possible vote-diddling: There are safeguards in the program
that would detect various kinds of vote tampering. I'd prefer not
to say what they are. However, they're not 100% foolproof, and a
knowledgeable programmer with root access and access to the source
code could probably figure out ways around them. And as previously
pointed out, Grex staff has access to the source.)

response 110 of 126:

Dec 5 18:19 UTC 1998

   I feel the same way.

response 112 of 126:

Dec 5 20:44 UTC 1998

I think davel is a good choice.

response 114 of 126:

Dec 6 18:19 UTC 1998

Ditto davel.  Ditto no mail.

response 116 of 126:

Dec 7 05:20 UTC 1998

Heh.  Of course, no one else in the world would ever do something like that,
John.

Um, I didn't volunteer for the vote-counter position.  However, it's no big
job; I'm honored by all those expressions of trust.  Exactly when is it that
the voting ends?  If the timing isn't too inconvenient, I would be willing
to do it.  (It would have to wait until I arise; I won't wait up until some
midnight just to count votes.)

response 118 of 126:

Dec 7 11:40 UTC 1998

I've resent the mail about cmcgee's withdrawal. I believe it worked
this time. (Because of a typo in the script, which I didn't catch
the first time, it ended up sending the same message 34 times to
the first person on the list, rather than sending the message to
34 people as intended. Sigh...)