In talking with Jim, he assures me that the subject title was not changed and that this was not a "draft" but rather a final. I believe it should be sent to the distribution list. What is the board's wishes? Bill -- jpowelljr wrote: > Here are the answers to some of Fred's questions: > > On Sat, Aug 21, 1999 at 11:17:38AM -0700, Fred Smoot wrote: > > > > What is the name and version of the voting software that was used in our > > runoff election? > > The software has no name or version number. Tim wrote it > from > scratch > between the first election and the runoff, with three goals > in mind: > accuracy, efficiency and easier voting. > > It is written in Perl and runs on a Unix server. The Perl > scripts are > short (they total about 300 lines of code) and are > straightforward for > a Perl programmer to understand. Tim would not have any > objection to > posting the source code if it would help allay anyone's > concerns about > whether it accurately tracks each vote. > > The `back-end' database software -- the server software that > actually > kept track of each person's e-mail address and how they > voted -- is a > server package called MySQL. MySQL is an industry-strength > open > source SQL database package: more details about it are at > http://www.mysql.org/. > > > Why was the software changed from that which was used in our initial > > election. Who made the decision? Who first suggested that the software > > be changed? > > Quote from Tim > "The reasons were to benefit everyone (not just the > committee > but also > the candidates and the voters). I didn't like having to > make excuses > for not running a single-candidate election, when knew > perfectly > well that better software would make such a thing trivial. > I also didn't like running software that was unforgiving > about the > format of submitted votes, and simply could not process some > of the > votes that were sent to us. These were the most important > reasons (in > my mind) for revising the election process." > > (The Election Committee worked with Tim to debug the > system. We tried hard to break it. When we found something > that we thought could be confusing or that just didn't work, > Tim fixed it. We did this before we announced the new > system. We decided it was the greatest thing going and > asked Tim if it would be ready to use. The rest is history) > > > Who, other than employees of RootsWeb.com Inc, actually monitored the > > entire voting process? Who was your on-scene teller? > > There was no `on-scene teller', just a Perl script that > confirmed votes and put them into a database. The only > things that Tim > monitored along the way were the Web server's error logs, > looking for any sign of malfunctions in the script. > > Tim did not monitor the vote submissions themselves, and > only > looked at > how an individual voted when they asked us to confirm their > vote manually. > > > Can you explain how you personally arrived at the election result > > numbers (copied below in your original message)? > > > > What kind of verification did you have in hand to prove that the > > election result numbers are correct? > Quote from Tim > "To do these things, I ran this SQL command against the vote > database: > > SELECT VOTE, COUNT(*) FROM VOTES ORDER BY VOTE" > > > Who actually holds the all the computer logs of the election? > > Tim does. vote.rootsweb.com is an alias for his personal > workstation. > The Web server logs that record each vote that was submitted > to us are > stored on Tim's machine. > > Each vote is physically stored on RootsWeb's database > server, which is > housed in a network center in Anaheim, California. The vote > database > includes this information about the voter: > > * their e-mail address > * who they voted for > * the confirmation code they were sent > * the date and time they voted > * the Internet host (i.e. ISP) from which they voted > * the date and time they confirmed their vote > * the Internet host from which they confirmed > > (Each of the Election Committee Members now holds a copy of > email address and their respective vote. We could > individually count them. I hope that is not necessary. > Which we have now examined and certified to be correct - > Jim) > > > How many unconfirmed votes (not accepted or otherwise rejected, etc.) > > were cast in the runoff election? > > 33 people submitted 39 votes that were never confirmed. > There are more votes than people because a few of them > submitted two or three unconfirmed votes. During the vote, > we added e-mail addresses to the list of eligible voters > whenever a SC notified us that someone's address had > changed. So some of these unconfirmed votes may have come > from people who subsequently voted successfully using their > new address. > > In any event, we have examined the vote counts for these > 39 votes and confirmed that these votes break down roughly > the same way as the confirmed votes. > (The committee did check the totals. Even though we believe > they can not be added, because they were not confirmed. We > would like to let you know that the percentages are roughly > the same in the favor of the same candidate. Jim) > > The Election Committee