[gentoo-project] Re: [RFC] vote.gentoo.org - a new voting frontend for Gentoo Elections

[Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org>]

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On 2019.07.27 07:21, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> (CC-ing all parties interested in technicals, plus main consumers)
> 
> I'd like to work on providing new web-based frontend for voting
> in Gentoo elections.  It would replace votify in the pipeline but
> generate countify-compatible data, so the votes would still be counted
> using old tooling.
> 
> 
> Goals
> =====
> The goals for the new system would be to:
> 
> 1. Improve privacy of votes by removing connection between voters
> and their confirmation IDs ASAP (not storing them unencrypted
> on permanent storage at all).
> 
> 2. Unifying voting mechanism for developers and non-developers.
> The latter currently vote by mail and get their votes manually hacked
> into the system.
> 
> 3. Removing dependency on dev.gentoo.org shell access for voting. 
> This
> is implied by 2. but should also support any future efforts of
> reducing
> reliance on the single system in Infra.
> 
> 4. Make it possible to use the system for unofficial elections (e.g.
> team lead votes).  Currently setting a vote up requires root
> privileges
> on dev.g.o which is not really feasible.
> 

5. Election Officials shall have a means to determine the voter turmout
from time to time while the election is in progress.

Today, its carried out by the -infra contact and publicised in reminders
to vote, IRC channel topics etc

[snip]

> Before the election starts, election officials prepare a list of voters
> containing their e-mail addresses and OpenPGP key fingerprints.  They
> run a script which creates tokens for all voters, encrypts them, then
> mails them to voters.

How do we deal with expired public keys?

Devs get a warning at commit time before their key expires. Non devs
will not be permitted (by gpg) to sign a ballot with an expired key.
Here, the election officials script will be attempting to make use of 
expired keys.

I can see another requirement ...
6. At the record date for any election, voters public keys shall be 
checked for validity until at least the end of the voting period.

That will give election officials time to remind the electorate to fix
their keys.

[snip]  

> Your comments
> =============
> What are your thoughts?
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
> 
> 

No showstopper comments from me.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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