[OpenID] What election?

[Martin Paljak]

On 04.12.2008, at 8:34, Mike Jones wrote:

> The current version of the election procedures is the one posted to  
> the board list on November 21st, which I've attached a PDF version  
> of here.  (I'll also post it to the http://openid.net/board/members/  
> directory once a local permission issue has been resolved.)
>
> Regarding revisiting your seconds, you can go back and second  
> additional people.  In fact, given that several additional people  
> have been nominated recently, I'd encourage everyone to go back to https://openid.net/foundation/members/elections/1 
>  and decide if you'd like to second any of the additional candidates.

Right. These questions are still not answered:
1. Is there a list of OpenID-s who are eligible to vote.
2. Is the election open or closed.
3. Where are the 'votes' kept, who counts them.

Instead of a private software development effort, why not use Jyte for  
the open election process? Here's why:

1. Everybody with an OpenID (which seems to be the form and pre- 
requisite for foundation membership anyway) can nominate themselves or  
somebody else. (claims such as "http://martin.paljak.pri.ee for OpenID  
board"). This way anyone could nominate a participant (a feature not  
available currently)
2. Everybody with an OpenID could cast a "vote" and share their  
comments.
3. On the election day, all casted votes on these claims are exported,  
filtered by the (openly available) list of people eligible to vote  
(foundation members) and counted.
4. Transparency is perfect, everybody could review and verify the  
outcome of the election.

This is something that drives me nuts in Estonia - you don't need  
hardcore cryptographic  technology to enable  e-democracy or e- 
participation processes (such as Estonian e-voting system), it usually  
only requires the willingness of the people involved to work in an  
open way. By exporting the Estonian super-duper e-voting technology to  
North Korea  nothing would probably be changed.

I would understand if the foundation process would be more formal,  
where all members would need to have been accepted by (board) meetings  
and a requirement to have a paper trail of those decisions etc. But  
currently this seems to be a very OpenID/$25 based process where it  
could really remain 'lightweight and web based'.


m.
-- 
Martin Paljak
http://martin.paljak.pri.ee
+372.515.6495