RFC: Voting...

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, May 04, 2010 at 02:01:31PM +0100, Mark Chappell wrote:
> (Information also requested from FESCo since they had a list of
> enhancements they'd be interesed in seeing)
> 
> I've been looking into enhancements/updates for the voting system
> (https://admin.fedoraproject.org/voting/). I started off with various
> niggles on the admin side (removing the need to directly modify the
> database being one of them). However there's now the rest of it...
> 
> As one of the groups using the voting system;
> * with regards the voting application it's self, are there any
> improvements you would like to see?
> * How would you see those improvements working (functionally)?
> 
> Possible thoughts from this end:
> 
> * Nominations?
> Running nominations through the app is a vague possibility, if it were
> to be done, then (functionally) how would you like this to work

The current system of using the wiki doesn't seem inordinately broken.
If we did nominations through the elections app, being able to
nominate oneself would probably be sufficient.  However, the context
around the nomination is important too.  Would the nomination entry
itself -- with the candidate information we current write on the wiki
-- then have to be setup by an admin for each election?  If so,
perhaps this level of automation doesn't gain us much.

> * Delegation?
> Are there functions you would like us to be able to delegate to other
> groups, eg allow FESCo/the Board to remove the embargo on the results of
> an election.

It would be interesting to have the election system tell us a few
things about voting patterns, provided it didn't expose voter
identities.  For example, did most voters cast votes at the beginning
or end of the election, or did voting happen at a fairly constant
daily rate?  How did candidates fare over time during an election?

If we were to report any of this information, we'd need to ensure the
election system -- or a wiki page it points to -- informs voters up
front in what fashion any of this information is aggregated.  And such
trend reporting shouldn't include any group membership or other
identifying information.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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