Re: [registrars] Re: Ballot should be secret until the end of the vot ing period.

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net>]

Ken,

I'm not sure what the proposal is, it would help if there was text.

I'll skip the irony of using mechanism-X to vote not to use mechanism-X
due to a claim of defect in mechanism-X.

I won't skip the question "What is mechanism-Y"? Personally, I really do
favor crayon, etcetera, and circumstance-aware process over rigid mechanism.

On the question of access to ballots, etc.

I know secret, winner-take-all, single-tier elections are familiar to some
registrars, from one civic environment, and several similar to it. This
doesn't mean it is better, simply different, from other forms of voting.

One of the "pros" of that form is that campaigns only have polling data
to change effectively outcomes.

One of the "cons" of that form is that votors only have outcome-data to
effectively detect campaigns.

If (this is a hypothetical) there was effective campaigning, which had as
its consequences, both a change in the total turn-out, and the allocation
of the incremental turn-out, that distinguishes the non-tie 2nd vote from
the tied 1st, an "open process" model would have allowed the existance of
that campaign (or campaigns) to be inferred from the live data, allowing
both tactial changes by competiting campaigns, and ballot switches by voters.
In the "closed process" model, the data would have only forensic value.

Eric