Election Data

[inode0]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:29 AM, CLAY S <clay at brokenladder.com> wrote:
> Let me first thank you all for your input on this.
>
> I can understand the sentiment that to give out this data would be somehow
> problematic, since it wasn't originally stated that it would given out.
> However, if it is anonymized, how does that really violate the privacy of
> any voter?  In fact, you could even remove a random subset of the votes, so
> that even if a voter looked at what got published and saw a unique ballot
> identical to the one he cast, he would still have no certainty that it was
> his vote.  At that point we get into the philosophical realm of asking, how
> much do you have do dilute the data before it's no longer a concern?  In
> some sense the data for these elections (in which there was no warning of
> possible publication) is actually _more_ valuable, because if you were to
> add a notice that there would be anonymous usage analysis, fewer people
> might vote strategically.  (This kind of "irrational" behavior is the
> subject of a great Google lecture by Dan Ariely.)

Why should Fedora make any of it public knowing that doing so will
affect the way people vote?

John