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Debian decides to allow secret votes

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Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#31

Post by turminal »

pydry wrote: post #22
the_lonely_road wrote: post #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 (f…

Which countries hide the votes their representatives make in parliament? What would you think about the ones that did?

A lot of countries do that at least in certain special cases.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#32

Post by dotancohen »

hutzlibu wrote: post #23
the_lonely_road wrote: post #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 (f…

"Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation?" I would argue a software project and a nation state is not the same kind of organisation. I am not involved in debian, so I would not judge what is the best system for them, but for example a group of friends making a decision on where to party, make sports, v…

  > but for example a group of friends making a decision on where to party, make
  > sports, vacation, etc. - would secret voting here make sense?
"Hey Bob, if you vote for having the party at Dave's house, I'll not suggest to Mary that the cigarettes were anything but tobacco, whaddayasay?"

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#33

Post by mlindner »

pydry wrote: post #25

For anybody wondering why you might want some sunlight to disinfect the voting process a look at how the NSA has previously managed to corrupt internet standards: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2013/... I'd be shocked if they didnt also have their claws into debian's operations for similar reasons. I'd not be very surprised if they were indirectly behind this push either. The fact that this se…

You're phrasing of "sunlight to disinfect the voting process" is rather disgusting personally...

You try to twist something that's quite horrible, namely voter corruption through public opinion as if it is somehow "disinfecting" anything. The mob mentality of the internet is best kept away from any voting base.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#34

Post by denton-scratch »

the_lonely_road wrote: post #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 (f…

Maybe because only Debian Developers can vote; the rest of us have no vote, so effectively the DDs are a sort of "college of electors", and it seems reasonable to me that users should at least have visibility into how the electors are voting.

I mean, I think it's OK that only DDs get to vote; but the Debian Project is supposed to be transparent, so I'd like to be able to find out how people voted.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#35

Post by pferde »

dotancohen wrote: post #32
hutzlibu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation?" I would argue a software project and a nation state is not the same kind of organisation. I am not involved in debian, so I would not judge what is the best system for them, but for example a group of friends making a decision on where to party, make sports, v…

> but for example a group of friends making a decision on where to party, make > sports, vacation, etc. - would secret voting here make sense? "Hey Bob, if you vote for having the party at Dave's house, I'll not suggest to Mary that the cigarettes were anything but tobacco, whaddayasay?"

Friendship over, immediately. (Group of friends is a completely different situation from what's being discussed here.)

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#36

Post by contravariant »

zucker42 wrote: post #17
spondyl wrote: 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…

Debian uses the Schulze method (if things haven't changed recently), so I do not see how that would have an impact on the result.

As far as I can tell the Schulze method does not satisfy the independence of irrelevant alternatives condition, and so adding an extra option can have an effect on the end result. However the upside is that you can actually recalculate what the result would have been if you remove one of the options, since the voting results are summarized as the number of people who prefer A to B, which shouldn't change if you remove one of the options.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#37

Post by dotancohen »

pferde wrote: post #35
dotancohen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but for example a group of friends making a decision on where to party, make > sports, vacation, etc. - would secret voting here make sense? "Hey Bob, if you vote for having the party at Dave's house, I'll not suggest to Mary that the cigarettes were anything but tobacco, whaddayasay?"

Friendship over, immediately. (Group of friends is a completely different situation from what's being discussed here.)

That's not so easy when the wives are friends or sisters.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#38

Post by zozbot234 »

dtech wrote: post #19
spondyl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the claim here is that Option 3 and Option 4 are the same in essence so if they had been reflected on the ballot as a single option, then that option would have won out over Option 2, changing the outcome. Assuming I understand this anyway. The way the votes are reflected is confusing to me

They use ranked choice voting so this shouldn't matter, as far as I understand RCV eliminates the lowest option one-by-one, passing the votes to the next option on each ballot as if the eliminated option never existed. The discussion seems to be about ballots with 3 > 2 > 4, and when 3 was eliminated the votes went to 2, allowing it to pass. That's a bit strange because you'd expect a ballot to always have 3 next to…

3 > 2 > 4 is very clear in that it means "I would most prefer to reaffirm public voting, but I do support secret voting so long as verification is allowed. I oppose secret voting without verification.". It's a meaningful vote. Why are people disagreeing about this?

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#39

Post by ilammy »

charcircuit wrote: post #27
danuker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with Debian's practices, but electronic voting can't work for a nation because: - centralization (there must be a central, corruptible place where the voters are authenticated or the votes are counted) - software is untrustable: https://www.win.tue.nl/%7Eaeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html The USA has had a Diebold voting scandal. Other countries are using a paper-based voting process which can be supe…

Electronic voting systems using zero knowledge proofs are superior to paper votes because it's possible to check for yourself that your vote was actually counted and not ignored. Paper voting is extremely expensive to scale compared to a website that lets you vote. Everyone could get a notification on their phone when they are asked to vote on something as opposed to having to fill out paper and send it somewhere to…

> zero knowledge proofs are [...] possible to check for yourself

Only if you're an expert cryptographer, else you're deferring to the authority.

> Paper voting is extremely expensive to scale

That's a feature.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#40

Post by Barrin92 »

pydry wrote: post #22
the_lonely_road wrote: post #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 (f…

Which countries hide the votes their representatives make in parliament? What would you think about the ones that did?

This is sometimes the case here in Germany, and one reason we do it is because our representatives are explicitly, by the basic law bound only to their own conscience.

Representatives toeing party lines is seen as an impoverishment to democracy.

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