Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!whuts!homxb!hropus!ki4pv!tanner
From: tanner@ki4pv.uucp (Dr. T. Andrews)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Posting and Counting Votes (was: Re: OFFICIAL Proposal for creation of Rec.Arts.Cartoons)
Summary: similar to old ideas on voting.  one interesting twist.
Message-ID: <7042@ki4pv.uucp>
Date: 24 Sep 88 13:39:57 GMT
References: <4808@juniper.uucp>
Organization: CompuData Inc., DeLand
Lines: 44

In article <4808@juniper.uucp>, yelorose@juniper.uucp (Bob Mosley III) writes:
) Newsgroups: news.admin,rec.arts.comics,rec.arts.anime,rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.startrek,talk.bizarre
) Votes will be counted only if received via E-Mail, or if a voter
) cannot find an alternative path to this address, which does happen

I am not sure that it is good  form  to  count  votes  which  are
posted  (instead  of  mailed)  under any circumstances.  However,
there are no doubt people (as indicated  above)  who  may  indeed
count such votes, possibly with the best intentions of being fair
and otherwise generally adhering  to  the  common  rules  of  net
voting.

I would like to see  a  scheme  in  place  whereby  someone  else
(besides the newsgroup proponant) be given the task of collecting
votes.   Pure  "vote"  messages  should   be   easily   tabulated
mechanically based on the "subject" line; any included text could
be peeled out and forwarded to someone else.

Can it be done, you ask?  Well,  I  have  a  more  complex  mail-
reading daemon around which figures out based on mail propagation
which of our customer sites may be having problems.  Picking  out
three items ("vote", "yes" or "no", and "news.group.name") should
not be much of a challenge.

Before voting  starts,  but  after  the  discussion  period,  the
central   vote   administrator  would  be  contacted,  given  the
newsgroup name and a person to whom comments might be  forwarded.
Then,  votes  (yes  or no) would be mailed to the magical address
(say, "votes@lucky_site"), where they would be tabulated and  the
comments forwarded.

One advantage to such a  scheme  (the  one  which  prompted  this
fast-growing  article) is that such a device is sure to NOT count
posted votes.  Not even votes posted with the text "I tried every
possible  mailpath  15  times,  and  it  always bounced" would be
counted.  Even votes with the  text  "my  mailer  is  broken,  so
please count this vote" would go unheeded.

Perhaps the "uunet" folks could be imposed upon to set up such  a
mailbox?  (I might be willing to provide a tolerably crude script
or program to count the votes and keep the voter list.)
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