From: steve@bucolix.ncsu.edu (Steve Garnier)
Subject: How Do You Verify Votes? (was Re: r.m.harley vote acknowledgment)
Reply-To: steve@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu (Steve Garnier)
Organization: North Carolina State University
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 15:17:24 GMT

In article <1132@zogwarg.etl.army.mil> 
hoey@zogwarg.etl.army.mil (Dan Hoey) writes:
>>jeq@i88.isc.com (Jonathan E. Quist) writes:
>>>Now wait just a minute.  Haven't _any_ of you ever experienced the
>>>variable reliability of e-mail?  Does all your mail go through in
>>>an hour?  A day?  A week?  If you sent some mail in, two days later
>>>saw a vote summary, and your name wasn't in it, would you resend
>>>the mail to get your vote counted, or just say, "oh, well, it'll
>>>count anyhow".....?
>
>steve@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu (Steve Garnier) writes:
>>I briefly considered the possibility you put forth, and dismissed it.
>>I have never had any email delay of more than one day between university
>>sites and major orgs such as NASA.
>
>Ah, a newbie.  You should shut up until you have enough experience to
>know what you're talking about.

I suppose six years experience sending email from NCSU to the world
still makes me a newbie.  I suppose you'd have me gain "experience"
by working at an "email elite" site such as zogwarg.etl.army.mil.
I'm sorry, Dan, but I'm not into self-abuse.  It's not my fault if 
your site has crippled email interconnection pathways.

During and after the previous RMH CFV, several people including myself,
volunteered to assist voters in delivering email by using our site
addresses for relaying email (as an example:
  harley-yes%vote-taking-machine.nasa.gov@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu), 
or by setting up mail aliases.  That is also why I recommended during the
most recent RMH CFV that people check the vote ack, and if they didn't find 
their vote acknowledged, to "please scream to the net".  I didn't hear
a *peep*.

You may now feel free to surgically remove your entire leg from your 
mouth, Dan.  

>It is a good idea to look over the list and locate the suspected
>duplicates.  To suspect, absent further evidence, that the duplicates
>are attempts at ballot box stuffing is ridiculous.  It just goes to
>show that some ignorami like to be obnoxious about it.

It's interesting that you use a plural form here, Dan.  Perhaps you meant
to include yourself in that classification as well.  In that light, I can
certainly understand your decision to use the plural form.  Let us not
forget to also similarly classify those who refuse to publish unwritten
rules, and thereby assist in keeping the rest of the net population just
a wee-bit closer to being called "ignorami".

Tell me, Dan.  Enlighten me.  Other than sending email and awaiting a reply,
exactly how do you gather evidence on the validity of an account name or
user, especially when the questionable accounts are on a machine that
refuses to accept finger connections?  Although the machine will accept
sendmail connections, that only proves that mail aliases exist.  I asked
three "people" on one machine, two of which were named "Problem Reporting, A"
and "advisor's utility disk", to please identify themselves...several times.
I finally received a reply from only one of those three, the only account
with a "human" name, and that individual refused to identify the other two
"people".

Steve Garnier - DoD #00000005 - '79 XS1100SF w/ 157K+ miles and *climbing*
KotF (Flame),  KotAM (Anecdotal Motorcycle),  The Daemon's Byte
       Contrary to popular belief, I am not the Devil's advocate...
                  ...but I am his speech writer.