From: gwh@soda.berkeley.edu (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Irregularities in Soc.culture.tamil Voting
Date: 28 Jul 1992 05:09:06 GMT
Organization: Dis-
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

Pardon me for the long included intro, but it's sort of needed...

alok@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (alok.vijayvargia) writes:
>dave@frackit.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe) writes:
>>alok@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (alok.vijayvargia) writes:
>>> To put these doubts to rest, I urge the
>>> vote taker to post the voting records
>>> of all the YES votes immediately.
>>
>> <sigh> Alok, I'd mail you a clue but your mailbox is probably full from
>> all the others sent you as a result of your "contribution" to this
>> thread. 
>
>You must think intimidating would put the doubts to rest !
>Incidentally, no one sent any mail of the clues you seem to dream off.
>All I saw was Martinez calling the request reasonable, and someone from
>University of Houston opposing the request on the grounds that file may be 
>too long.  (File could have been posted in parts in that case).

Perhaps you misunderstand the voting process somehow... when the results
are posted, those _are_ the voting records.  If you mean the complete
set of saved email votes, nobody ever posts that... it's way too big
in every vote, and there's just no need to.  In extreme cases when
there's been serious doubt of a votes' legitimacy, a neutral third
party is often allowed access to it, but _posting_ them makes no sense
whatseover.  The tens of thousands of readers of news.groups don't need to 
all look at it in detail.

>Then Sridhar posted a reorganized list of voters by sites.
>This showed that a number of sites (University of Houston being one of them) 
>had contributed disproportionate number of votes.

This is a natural tendency in usenet votes, and in fact in life in
general.  Statistically, you will get clumps of votes in any truly
random system.  In any system with real-world external influences, like
offline lobbying for groups (which is totally within the guidelines,
as long as it isn't the votetaker), you see _lots_ of clumping.


>Now comes your response apparently trying to ridicule and intimidate.
>You think because you are a system administrator, you know it all
>and no one has a right to even raise doubts on a vote.

There are right and wrong ways to raise objections to the outcome of a
vote.  It's been done before with Usenet votes and will be done again.
You're not doing it right by demanding that all the votes be reposted
in entirety to the net.  If you have any more significant evidence
than a few questionable accounts having voted or a large clump of
votes, then ask Tale or any of the news.groups regulars to check
it out (I will if you show me something (EMAIL)).  If there's enough
cause for suspicion, we'll ask for a copy of the vote files.  If that
doesn't answer the suspicion then something will be done about the
problem.  

>I say you try to keep quiet and stop interfering on anything and everything 
>on the net.

Calm down.  If you really think there's something wrong, TRUST US that
there is a way to investegate it.  We (the inclusive Usenet we) have done
it before when things were suspicious.  But don't just suggest that we
do it your way; that's not effecient or sensible.  If you trust that
there isn't a great conspiracy to cover anythng up, and are patient,
teh truth will come out AND you won't alienate those that really
care about Usenet 8-).  Don't just try to do it yourself.  Many
of us have gone through all this before, we know the ropes, and
can do it "right".


-george william herbert
gwh@soda.berkeley.edu  gwh@lurnix.com  herbert@uchu.isu92.ac.jp until 28 aug
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