From: karish@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Chuck Karish)
Subject: Voting rules (was: Re: rec.motorcycles.harley vote acknowledgment)
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 21:15:15 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.151522.20550@ncsu.edu> steve@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu
(Steve Garnier) writes:
>Instead of treating the symptom of their
>pain, let's try to cure one of the diseases that caused it...the lack of 
>voting rules.

Steve, if you're still talking about last winter's vote here,
I don't think it's correct to blame irregularities on the
lack of voting rules.  The only multiple-vote errors I
remember were inadvertant, caused by votes crossing
acknowledgements in the mail and re-votes because the
voter forgot whether he'd voted or couldn't tell whether
the vote message had bounced.  These problems will never be
completely eliminated by adding to the guidelines.

>>> I've been trying to assist a clean-up of the voting procedures, but
>>> apparently in an extremely politically-clumsy way. 

Not the least of this clumsiness is leaving the "Subject:"
header set to "Re: rec.motorcycles.harley vote acknowledgment".
This has led many readers to interpret Steve's continued
postings as a rear-guard action to invalidate the r.m.h
vote.  It has also probably caused most of the experienced
news admins to skip the thread, depriving Steve of needed
input.

>Lazlo, it appears that what you're telling me is that *unwritten* rules
>should remain *unwritten*.  Until the rules are published, nobody has *any*
>right to complain about multiple-voting irregularities, since anyone could
>argue that there is no written definition of acceptable voting practices. 

When did lack of a well-defined *right* ever stop people
from complaining on usenet?  ;-)

Steve's concerns about voting irregularities and comments about
the need for more rules are almost as tired a cliche as are
the periodic predictions of The Imminent Death Of The Net As
We Know It.

The guidelines are not rules, they're guidelines.  Usenet
is a consensus organization.  There are no hard and fast
rules, largely because there's no mechanism to enforce
rules other than the willingness of individual news admins
to act in accord with the consensus of interested parties.

I have yet to see a vote summary that shows that
irregularities due to ambiguities in the present guidelines
have amounted to more than one or two percent of the votes
cast.  The consensus has been that it's not worthwhile
to establish more restrictive rules to try to reduce this
proportion.

>Until "One Person, One Vote" is codified into the Guidelines, a vote-taker 
>has no real reason, other than personal ethics, to investigate the possibility
>of "One Account, One Vote" multiple-voting.

The vote-taker has a very good reason for investigating
multiple votes: establishing the credibility of the
vote tally.

>Also, nowhere in the Guidelines
>is there mention that "One Account, One Vote" is unacceptable voting behavior,

This would be a good addition to the guidelines, but I
don't see its absence as a fatal flaw.

>Even the Romans published their laws 2500+ years ago in their public places.

The Romans maintained a standing army to enforce their
laws.  Usenet has no need, no means, and no desire to establish
such a system.
--

    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@forel.stanford.edu