All Votes Are In

Polls are Closed
All the votes from all the members are in! Hurrah! If any of you would like to show friends the system, feel free to let them vote if they'd like. I think it's fun myself but I'm strange that way.

Now is also great time to post a wish list of improvements and new features for the voting system. As the member of the Guild responsible for the system, I'd like to see it improve every iteration. I'll give anyone who can find a bug (especially one that allows a member to cast a second vote L$1000).

I'll go over the results and post the findings hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow for discussions on Sunday. Because of the way the system works, I'll need to contact faction winners independently to see if they wish to serve (I'll automate that next time). The next RA can start meeting as soon as next weekend.

Important
Now for the serious stuff. I need two things from some folks:

There were a few citizens who voted as alts, which is against the voting rules as stated on the first page. Please contact me by email at [email]Ulrika.Zugzwang@gmail.com[/email] to discuss how to remedy this situation. If you contact me before I contact you, we'll simply discuss a solution for next time and toss out the extra vote(s). If I have to wait and approach you, it will be with official voting fraud charges.

Also, one person was able to vote twice. You'll know it's you if you received and bookmarked two separate receipt URLs. This is no big deal, it's just a bug in the system, and I'd like your help trying to understand how it happened. I suspect clearing cookies and adding white space at the end of a first or last name myself.

The reason I don't simply contact folks personally right now is that your identities are hidden in alphanumeric hashes that I haven't written code to reverse yet. I'd like to leave it that way, however, if you don't contact me first, I'll work on the code to extract the names shortly.

~Ulrika~

These are all just harmless suggestions for Ulrika (because she asked), and for possible future discussion at an RA, I dont see anything constructive being accomplished in talking about them on the forum.

my suggestions:

1) Voting booth
As much as I am fond of it as a simulation, (I love it actually), I suggest we scrap the voting booth. Perhaps we could just hand out PINS to all eligible members at the start of the voting period only. Members could then vote at any convenient time during the announced voting period.

2) Election Literature
There should be a pamphlet or something given to all members, as well as available at the voting booth (should we decide to keep it), clearly explaining the election process in simple language. I would be more than happy to prepare something like this if no one else wants to.

3) Third party count
It would be nice if the counting of the ballots could be trusted to a dis-interested outside party as this would be more professional looking IMO.

Also, I have no idea how to do it, but this:
Should be made *impossible* (if at all possible)



I see item one and three as (weakly) linked so if one is implemented then three is not so important, whereas if one is not implemented then three becomes more important. I think it leaves the system open to possible gaming to have any kind of linkage between both "ends" of the process in that way.

.

Sorry, everyone, but you'll have to excuse Sudane as she gets a little emotional here.

100% voter turnout. OK, ok, there are only 17 of us. OK, ok, I harangued pretty much everybody to be sure and vote. But, 100% turnout is really a HUGE thing. That means that 100% of the people who have chosen to invest in some land in Neualtenburg have also chosen to participate in this very first (to my knowledge) experiment in virtual world democracy. It means that only nine months after the idea was conceived by Ulrika and others (well, I'm approximating the time span for effect ), we have held an election where every last person cared enough to vote. It means that despite the very dark days of last winter, when we knew that Neualtenburg had no home, and we faced what seemed like an impossible obstacle to purchase our own sim; it means that the people here now have said: Yes.. We want part of that.

I'm moved, people. I know, a couple of folks have asked why I thank them when they say the voted; what's that about? But, that's the way I feel. Thank you, all!


Sudane

Hurrah!

Long live Neualtenburg.

~Ulrika~

The voting booth is not a simulation rather it is a critical piece of the system, in that it links an in-world avatar to a real-life voter. If passwords were handed out ahead of time, it would be much easier for people to share, trade, or sell votes by exchanging PINs.

With the current system, the booth generates a random PIN at that moment that expires shortly after issue. This makes vote sharing, trading, and selling quite difficult.

This would be wonderful!

The elections for the RA should be supported by the Guild and administered by the SC. Given that all voters are provided a receipt, a third party can be used after the election to validate the results.

This is one of the critical features of our system. The receipts guarantee that the outcome is independent of the administrator. The election can be verified independently by a third party afterwards by using the voting receipts. (This is a very progressive feature that doesn't even exist in the U.S.)

It's critical that the SC implement the elections, as in every election so far there has been at least one instance of voting fraud. The Neualtenburg judicial system (SC) and the Guild need to be directly involved to monitor this abuse and fix exploits or bugs respectively.

~Ulrika~

Now is the time for electioneering paraphernalia to be cleared away and a fresh sparkle put on our beautiful city. I'll start by taking down my election photo cube and the posters I put up. One thing that irritates me in RL is posters left to languish when their purpose has expired.

That's good, practical, sensible, and pragmatical advice, Garnet

And - hooray as well

How is an alt different than a non-citizen? You had mentioned in an earlier post that a number of non-citizens voted, and their votes were tossed out. In fact, you even pointed out that you encouraged the phenomenon, as it gave visitors a taste of our system. I feel that's a very good idea.

A the beginning of the process, I provided, as a routine matter, a list of all the current citizens of Neualtenburg. For two reasons actually. One, I felt that both factions had a right to a complete list of the citizens (which, of course, are available on the posted Land Journal), and two, because I assumed that the voting process required a list of valid voters in order to function. Our own "voter registration list", as it were.

It seems elementary that since the name of the voting avatar is "sensed" anyway, and incorporated into the "hash" which you have not yet deciphered, that that name be compared to the voter list, in order to determine if this is a valid vote.

Every voting system that I am aware of (and I'll confess, I'm very unaware of voting systems) incorporates a voter registration listing, against which every vote is compared. I cannot understand how ours can be different.

In light of the fact that the voting process was left open, that non-citizens were readily allowed to vote (seen as a positive thing), and,

in light of the fact that the voting procedure has obviously and readily allowed the election administrator to identify both non-citizen votes and citizen-alt votes and invalidate them, and,

in light of the fact that the precise mechanics of the election process are hardly understood by the citizens as a group, and therefore anyone voting as an alt may cartainly have assumed that the vote would be invalid, since that alt was not a citizen;

in light of all those points; I propose that the issue of identifying those who voted as alts be dropped immediately.

I suggest that the election commission be enjoined from any immediate attempt to decipher the actual names of voters, pending bipartisan agreement on this issue. I suggest that the election process be modified so that it is impossible, forever, to determine the name behind any individual vote. And I suggest that if it is not already part of the process, that all votes be compared to an approved voter registration list, a list which is public information for exactly the reasons concerned about here.


Sudane

Yay!! I agree Sudane! Thank you to everyone for turning out to vote. Even though our lives may be/get hectic, it is amazing to know that the people involved in this project care enough about it to take the time to see that we move forward. It makes me extreamly hopeful for the future of the city, and I'm looking forward to seeing this great group of people in action for a long time to come!!



I agree with this statement very much! I also think this is an issue that can be further discussed and resolved by our government during this upcoming term.

Starting Monday the 8th of august till about the 16th or 17th, I will not have internet at my new house. However, I will be able to check my email and the forums while on breaks at work. So I will be staying in touch with all of you even though I won't be able to be in world for a week and a half. I'm itching to start decorating my home too!! hehe.. I'll try to pop in world tomorrow to clean up the signs I put out.

Thank you again everyone for voting!!

Well I was tring to be vague so as not to arouse a lot of divisive argument.
I will be plainer, then you can tell me I'm wrong and well leave it at that perhaps.

Apologies if I dont put in enough smiley faces or whatever I got a bit of sunstroke yesterday and am not feeling particularly fantastic.

My concern with the booth is that it links the physical act of an avatar preparing to vote with the web-site in a particular way. It seems likely to me that getting the PIN and going to the site to vote would almost always occurr concurrently. I know I went to the web site immediately after getting my PIN, while my avatar was standing in the square in fact . The voting instructions even read that way, "get your PIN, then go vote" (paraphrased).

I am not aware of the exact details for the web dealie (why would I be), but it seemed to me that the administrator of the vote gets to "see" the votes coming in as they occur. Even if they do not, mine has a date and time on it that is not in the hashed part, so I am assuming that the administrator would have access to that time stamp perhaps. (Please don't hesitate to correct me if I am wrong on that, it seemed that way from the announcement of partial results.)

*If* that is true, then it would be fairly easy to get an idea *most* of the time, which avatar is linked to which vote. Who is standing in the square (or even still in the booth when the vote arrives on the web), would be most likely who placed that vote. That was my concern.

I *like* the booth, the "simulation" comment was about the physical simulation of a voting booth *not* a dig or a jab at it's utility.

If I am wrong about this possible linkage, then fine, I like the booth and lets keep it. Otherwise, I think this almost qualifies as "bug" not in the code, but in the procedure, and like the election administrator, I am concerned about bugs.

Of course the veiw from the Guinea Pig cage is always obscure ...

.

Could everyone take pictures of their political objects in the city before taking them down? I would love some images that show how the city was transformed right before the elections. It's great for future PR.

Send your photos to SL pics so I can nab them later. Don't be afraid to be artistic.

~Ulrika~

Yes. I agree that noncitizen, duplicate, and alt votes should be tossed out. For noncitizens, it is simply a matter of checking their name against a list of citizens and ignoring that vote. For duplicate votes, the last votes are ignored and the problem is debugged. For fraudulent alt voting, the alt votes are ignored and a hearing with the SC is required.

The RA may hold whatever hearings it wants on the issue (like the congress holds hearings on controversial issues) but voter fraud is clearly a matter for our judicial system which is the SC. Hopefully, the individuals who double voted and alt voted will send me an email (Ulrika.Zugzwang@gmail.com) so I can learn about the bug and seek understanding respectively.

Those who are interested in true democracy understand already the threat that fraud and abuse pose to the system.

We can do this now if you'd like. However the price will be that we must toss out all anomalous votes and this will change the outcome of the election.

I can go either way on this, we just have to decide before I release the election results. Also, if existing members of the RA are curious about the anomalies, send me an email and I'll describe them to you in detail, as well as giving you advice on how the RA could help.

~Ulrika~

Why is my question not clear? What is a "fraudulent alt vote"? A vote by any avatar/agent not on the list of citizens is a vote by a non-citizen. Plain and simple. How does anyone of us know whether a given avatar is an alt of someone else? What does it matter? The alt/other avatar is a non-citizen; therefore, that vote is non-valid. There is no fraudulence involved in this issue.

I repeat. There is no matter at hand for our judicial system until it is established what "voter fraud" is. "Alt voting", whatever that is, is not fradulent voting. It is voting by a non-citizen of the city. The voting system should easily see that, and understand those votes as non-valid, whether they be "trial votes", "let's- explore-the-voting-system" votes; whatever.
Threats to bring charges and hold hearings will not encourage people to participate constructively in improving our election system.

Of course. It seems to me that we have no clear evidence of such activities.

We know that 17 citizens have voted. There should be 17 valid votes. If one person voted twice, (the only valid subject of interest here, from the point of view of a bug-fix of the code), that person's first vote or second vote can be counted. Makes no difference. The identity of the voter of any given vote must be absolutely sealed. That is the expectation of every voter in this election.

This is not rocket science. The voting system must be simple and anonymous. And it must unambiguously identify a citizen from a non-citizen. And it must accept only one vote from each citizen. If this voting system cannot achieve those rather simple goals, then I would very regretfully say that it must be replaced. And, forgive me, these are simple goals. The tabulation process following the collection of data may be excrutiatingly complex... I can readily understand the technical difficulties. But assuring that a "data collection" system (a voting system) meets those goals should be very straightforward.

Emailing to me, a current member of the RA, data not shared with other citizens is inappropriate. If the data is not associated with persons names, it should be entirely available. The "hue and cry" which we experienced earlier this week over over the possible pre-mature release of voting trends was akin to the controversy surrounding the problem with broadcasting pre-election results. The issue no longer applies. The election is over now. 17 persons have voted. The public has every right to see the data contained in those 17 votes.


Sudane

I agree. Not even IP numbers can make for a positive identification, given that many legitimate voters might share a single IP for a variety of reasons - roommates sharing a single IP via a router, college students, couples, or even the use of public Internet cafes.

Now, if ANYONE can be shown to be actively tampering with the system, that's a wholly different matter. But if someone is using a (non citizen!) alt? It's no different than any other non-citizen voting, and given how non-citizen voting was considered useful in this election, I think it would be quite wrong to do otherwise.

Oh, and for the record, I'm curious if one of those double votes could possibly be mine, come to think of it - I voted, got to the internal faction rankings, and accidently closed out my browser, which of course required me to log-in a second time. I don't recall if I had actually clicked "submit" for those votes or not, or if the form was just up on the browser at the time, but that may account for one abberation of some kind.

There are enough concerns here that the whole election process warrants a complete overhaul. I think it imperative in the meantime that the results are published as soon as possible (without revealing names). We are all tired and busy but we need to establish credibility both amongst ourselves and with other people.

I am still in agreement with Sudane about this issue. However, I think the results of the current election, whatever they may be, should still stand. And let this issue be on the plate of the government for the coming term. I don't think holding our government in limbo right now is a great idea.

So my input would be to go ahead with posting the results as you were going to, and then going from there.

It's not you.

~Ulrika~

I am dedicated to creating the first representative democracy in SL. If it takes an afternoon to sort out complications, then it's going to take an afternoon to sort out the complications. It is my sole purpose as a member of the SC to make sure the elections proceed fairly and provide accurate results.

While it's true that we have no voting laws, we do have the following information on the voting page that everyone was able to read:
We can either follow all these rules as if they were law or we can follow none of them. Depending on how we do this, we can go a few different ways:

1. It says clearly in the voting rules that individuals voting as an alt could lead to invalidation of the votes and loss of citizenship. If we are going to abandon this rule, then we should abandon the privacy rules as well and make public the information with which I have a problem and solve it by committee. From here we will have the next RA pass laws to solve the problem for next time.
   
2. We can keep these rules (which is what we should do) and give me more time to research the problem and contact the individuals personally. The reason is, is that if there is an alt involved in this it also means a potential violation of the covenant, which is a law to which we're contractually obligated to follow and me to enforce.
   
3. Finally, we can invalidate election, I can work with the current RA to pass new laws, and we can do it again next weekend.

Beyond this, all of you have to ask yourself if you want one person to have one vote or one avatar to have one vote. If you say one alt has one vote, then I plan on cutting my parcel up into twenty lots, selling each to one of my twenty alts, and voting for myself in the next election.

Another possible solution would be to weight the votes based on the amount of land area owned. This could really solve a lot of our problems, however, the RA would no longer be a truly democratic body (although as things stand, it isn't one right now).


I hope you'll all understand my commitment to the city, our laws, and the democratic process. Please respond to the above comments in a productive manner, giving potential solutions and opinions in a way that doesn't serve yourself or your party but the city as a whole.

~Ulrika~

While I understand that voting with an alt is not allowed, I am still confused how this particular alt could have caused an upset in the election. If they (the alt) are non-citizen, then their vote does not count anyway. After some thought, I began to wonder if perhaps this alt *is* a citizen (as well as their main), and that is why you have concerns Ulrika? Because yes, if this person was a citizen, which of their votes should count, etc. But if they (the alt) are not a citizen, then I cannot see how it could have harmed the election (especially since other non-citzens voted as well). This is where my main confusion comes in Ulrika.

I'm also not saying this violation of the law should go unnoticed or unpunished, just that I'm not sure it is enough to invalidate the election (except under the circumstance where this alt actually is a citizen as well).

I will lose the ability to be in world after Monday the 8th, and it will not be till at least after the 16th that I"ll be able to get in world again. If we all end up needing to re-vote, I'll be unable to do so if you do it next weekend.

Yes I'm curious how an ALT would be considered anything other than a non-citizen. Is it even legal to have ALT own land in Neualt since each AV is limited in the total number of land they can purchase? If we have 17 citizens, and 17 counted votes, then what's the issue?

The persons in question are all citizens!

I'm sure we can work out this vote. I just need to communicate the problem without compromising privacy well enough to have folks offer serious advice on how to proceed.

The results of this discussion will determine if we will try to keep the RA a true democratic republic, have a nondemocratic alt-based vote, or a nondemocratic land-based vote. Given that we call ourselves a democratic republic (think of how many web pages I'll have to edit), I thought it would be good to pause and work through these issues.

~Ulrika~

The problem is that potentially the 17 citizens and 17 counted votes come from less than 17 individuals. This may or may not be OK.

~Ulrika~

Ok. This sheds new light (at least for me) so thank you for clarifying Ulrika!!

So basically, this alt is a citizen. The alt has a main that is also a citizen. So we have 16 [physical] people who voted, but 17 total votes. I can see how this could alter the outcome, yes. And yes this is clearly a violation of our laws.

But I do have to ask, how do you know for a fact that this person is an alt citizen of a main account citizen? If the voting is private, how were you able to determine this? Basically, how did you know a "name" tied to a particular vote? If you could only tell when citizens, non-citizens, etc. voted, how could you know for certain that a citizen who voted was an alt account?

This concerns me as much as much as the original issue. And I do not mean to diminsh the original issue *at all*. Only that the whole picture is starting to come into focus, and if we are going to fine tune our voting process, I feel *all* of these issues need to be addressed.

I don't know who voted for what (although with some effort I could do that if I needed to but I don't really want to because we'd rather watch Battlestar Gallactica).

The votes came from the same IP address.

~Ulrika~

Ok. So I have a list of 17 citizens given to me which reads:



Do you know for a fact that one of these citizens is an alt of the other? If you are basing it on IP address alone, that could also mean just a case of spouses, family, or roomates. Before this accusation can be made (that someone is an alt), do you know *for a fact* that neither other scenario could be the case, and that *for a fact* this is one person with two accounts?