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Debian decides to allow secret votes

lwn.net

1–10 of 280 posts

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#4
Apparently by a single vote and the legitimacy of the vote is in question due to some technicality I didn't care to reread until I understood. What I don't understand is why the project is NOT already secret voting? Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation? I googled the first three that came to mind (france uk, usa) and they all seem to do so.

Anyone associated with the Debian project have any insight on why voting is not secret and/or any other large os projects doing the same that could chime in?

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#6
post #3

Quoted post unavailable.

Reader mode on mobile Firefox works fine for me on LWN. From my experience LWN has always been a very readable website that works pretty well on mobile too.

Do you mind sharing what exactly you disapprove about how the content is structured without reader mode?

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#7
post #3

Quoted post unavailable.

I understand you, but you picked a strange hill to fight on.

Lwn is such a simple website, and the article is just one paragraph.

Also what is reader mode to you? Because in Firefox I clicked the little reader view icon in the url bar and it showed me a reader view with just the main content.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#8

Apparently by a single vote and the legitimacy of the vote is in question due to some technicality I didn't care to reread until I understood. What I don't understand is why the project is NOT already secret voting? Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation? I googled the first three that came to mind (f…

The legitimacy was questioned by a single person, so far all replies indicate that said person was simply mistaken on multiple counts, and in the meantime, said person no longer sees a problem.

Reasons against secret voting were expressed in ballot option C:

https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_001#textc

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#9
A brief summary because I had to re-read this a few times to figure out what was going on.

Debian had a vote with 4 options:

Option 1 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote"

Option 2 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote and allow verification"

Option 3 "Reaffirm public voting"

Option 4 "None of the above" (NOTA)

The objection raised here is that Option 3 and Option 4 can be considered to be the same depending on how you interpret them (ie; "None of the above" vs "Keep public ballots" which can be said to implicitly suggest none of the above at the same time). If those two were represented as a single "NOTA" option, that option would have won the ballot in terms of votes.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#10
post #9

A brief summary because I had to re-read this a few times to figure out what was going on. Debian had a vote with 4 options: Option 1 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote" Option 2 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote and allow verification" Option 3 "Reaffirm public voting" Option 4 "None of the above" (NOTA) The objection raised here is that Option 3 and Option 4 can be consi…

I haven’t read the article, but isn’t debian’s voting orders the options? In which case 3 > 4 vs 4 > 3 wouldn’t really change the outcome.
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