On 12/06/2009 01:42 AM, Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
We will have an expert on voting systems and methods on the call
I've had a lot of contact with so-called "experts" on voting (I was a director of the Open Voting Consortium and also a principal in a group that put together an effort for the University of California to develop a reference implementation of a trustable, verifiable voting system for use by California.) Not all voting "experts" are well versed in all aspects of voting. Were I to pick an expert who has a synoptic view would be Douglas Jones of the University of Iowa. For an expert on how one can (or ought not) do network related voting, I'd pick Barbara Simons (who nearly won the year 2000 public election for the ICANN board). And for someone who can come up with ideas about how to mechanize security, David Chaum. Voting a list of preferences, whether counted using STV/IRV, Condorcet, or something else, does work and such systems have been used in both public and private elections. Usually after some initial surprise how to cast votes such systems become comprehensible to voters (how the actual canvasing [counting] occurs may not be so obvious.) In the larger scheme, the choice of system to use for vote casting and canvasing is a tiny matter compared to the question of what kind of seats are up for election, terms of those seats, how the candidates obtain their places on the ballot, and who gets to cast votes. --karl--