I've been working on a complete re-write of the vote program
that we use for board elections and proposals. A major part
of it is a web interface that is now about 80% complete.
You can't quite cast a vote via the web yet, but I'd like
feedback and suggestions on what there is so far. You can
view the "Grex Voting Booth" page at
http://www.cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/pw/voting-booth
Currently, it shows candidates' statements and a select-form
for choosing the people you want to vote for. The "cast my
ballot" button doesn't work yet, though -- if you click on
it, you get an error message instead of having your vote
recorded. I'll remedy this defect when I get a 4 or 5 hour
chunk of time to write the software; I expect that will
happen within a week, so that it will be possible to vote
via the web in the current board election. In the meantime,
you have to log into grex and run the "vote" command to vote.
(If you do this, the web page will show you who you voted
for the next time you access it, however.)
If you have any suggestions regarding the form or content
of the "voting booth" page, please feel free to make them
here. Since I'm working on a complete re-write of the vote
program, this is also a good item in which to suggest other
changes and new features as well.
24 responses total.
Seems pretty easy to use. I like it.
It looked easy to use to me, too. One suggestion: I know people by their loginids. Their names usually don't jump out at me. Could you include their loginids both where you vote and where the position statements are located?
I like the fact that each time you load the page the order that the candidates are listed in changes, and that the order on the ballet sheet matches the order that the statements are listed in. Very good design.
Re #2: Yes, login id's could easily be included on both the ballot and the statement headers. Re #3: Thanks. The 'tty' version of the program has always randomized the order in which candidates are listed, so it was easy enough to import that feature to the web version.
How do I make my 4 votes? Only one name at a time lights up.
Depending on what type of computer and browser you're using, you might have to hold down the control key when you click on names in order to make multiple selections. That does seem to be the case with both MS Explorer and Netscape running on Windows. I should probably have the web page display a note about that.
Voting via the web is now operational. You can point your
browser to
http://cyberspace.org/cgi-bin/pw/voting-booth
and vote for the candidate(s) of your choice.
Also, the form now displays login id's as well as full names.
Oh, I suppose that a link to the voting booth from somewhere near the top of Grex's web page tree would be in order. I'll mail the webmasters asking them to do that. Then you won't have to type in that ugly URL.
It's there now. If you go to Grex's front page you will find a link to the voting booth. Only people with Grex accounts can follow it. If you have been using backtalk, it will not authenticate you again, otherwise, it will ask for your grex account and pw. Only members' votes count, of course.
It did authenticate me again, even though I clicked on the URL entered by remmers and am currently using Backtalk. I hadn't restarted Netscape since Friday, though, and didn't have to authenticate to get into Grex this morning, so maybe that's why.
Although it's been up for less that 2 days, a fair number of people are trying out the web interface. Of the 66 ballots cast so far, 13 have been via the web.
John, is there a way for normal people to know how many votes have been cast? Not that there's any real need for it, I was just curious. Didn't there used to be a "turnout" command?
Hey there, just who are you callin' abnormal? ;-)
Re #12: There used to be a turnout command that anybody could run. Since we got rid of quotas, there seems to be less need for it. If I can find the program (or find time to write it again) I'll make it accessible.
Re #13: I'm callin' *you* abnormal. Wanna make something of it? ;) Re #14: I see what you mean about quotas. But it would satisfy my curiosity nonetheless. Thanks.
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The "turnout" number would have to be kind of meaningless. Presumably John's count of 66 people includes non-members, whose votes don't count. Since someone could buy a membership today and have his non-counting vote suddenly count, we can't even tell for sure how many of those votes really do count. So, it'd be cute to have, but the numbers wouldn't tell anyone much of anything.
Sure. It's just for fun.
And what's Grex for, after all, if not fun?
It's certainly possible to write a "turnout" program that
differentiates between members and non-members and tells you how
many of each flavor have voted. This is a busy time of the year
for me, so I don't know if I'll get around to writing it before
the election is over, but if I find myself with a couple of
hours in which I want to avoid do the work I should be doing,
maybe I'll do it.
Actually, a big part would be to write a C function
ingroup(char *LOGIN, char *GROUP)
which returns 1 if LOGIN is a member of GROUP and 0 otherwise.
If somebody else wants to write that, I could put the rest of
it together...
I mailed some code to remmers that does this.
Whoops, so did I.
How about this remmers?
int ingroup(char *LOGIN,char *GROUP)
{
if(!strcmp(GROUP,getgrgid(getpwnam(LOGIN)->pw_gid)->gr_name))
return 1;
else
return 0;
}
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That's correct. I'll look over aruba's & mdw's code when I get a chance. Thanks for your efforts.
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