[Foundation-l] [Election] Unqualified votes striking

Thu Jul 5 16:56:04 UTC 2007

This letter is sent personally and has not been reviewed or approved by the rest of the election committee, but reflects what I know to be true:

I'd like to answer a couple of Greg's points below...

First, it's important to point out that no one from ElecComm will get the key.  I don't think there's anyone on the committee that would even TAKE if, if it were offered.  Despite some rather kooky conspiracy theories, the Election Committee has remained neutral and shall remain neutral.  We have all voluntarily given up our privilege to vote in this election, and have not supported or campaigned for any candidate.  The security of the votes has been assured through the use of a third party provider (SPI), and despite an honest mistake on the part of the committee in creating the voter list (which, I should point out, was not only fixed but was immediately announced to our auditor and the community), we are very comfortable with the security of the election to this point.

As for the decryption: we have specifically built into the timeline sufficient time that we can evaluate the voter list and remove inappropriate votes (multiple votes, votes from banned/blocked users, etc) before asking SPI to decrypt the votes.  SPI is aware that they are not to decrypt the votes until they get a "go-ahead" from us, and they absolutely will not provide any results prior to the voter list being approved by the election committee.  SPI has been a wonderful partner in this process, and their good faith efforts and the use of their server is greatly appreciated by the committee.  It should be mentioned, by the way, that they have fallen all over themselves to partner with us and have done absolutely everything that we asked without once asking for a thing in return.

I appreciate the high interest in this election, 
Philippe
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gregory Maxwell 
  To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
  Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 11:31 AM
  Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Election] Unqualified votes striking

  On 7/5/07, Jan-Bart de Vreede <wiki at devreede.net> wrote:
  >  >Is the situation only that the
  >  >edit count criteria was misapplied and nothing has been changed from
  >  > the official election rules?
  >
  > Yep

  Thank you, this is a great relief.

  [snip]
  > I would also like to point out that the members of the election
  > committee are currently spending a LOT of time on these elections and
  > that the foundation really appreciates all their hard work :)

  Yes, indeed, it is a monumental task.

  > PS: And also to repeat: NO ONE within the foundation (including members
  > of the board/advisory board) has access to the key needed to look at the
  > election results...

  It needs to be assured that no one except SPI *ever* has access to the
  key used to decrypt the ballots, otherwise the secrecy of the
  User->ballot connection is compromised. I pointed out this weakness
  last year, but it was not sufficiently addressed.

  Ideally all determinations about ballot validity will be made final
  before a single ballot is decrypted, and after they are decrypted the
  key should be destroyed.

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