Someone asked how to collect votes using email. The scheme suggested
here is succeptible to tampering by the person whose account is being
used. But it should suffice for some purposes.
The scheme
A user creates a special email address. Voters send messages containing their
votes to this address. The messages are forwarded to observers, and
copies are collected in a file. The file is visible on the Web.
Voters must already have agreed to the scheme, and on the user and
observers in advance.
How to implement it
Suppose petra-k user Amy Greene (agreene@pk.greens.org) and observers
Buzz Hemphill (buzzh@example.edu) and Candice Bract (candybee@example.org)
are chosen by the group to carry out the vote on Issue 3.14 (whatever that is).
Amy decides the ``ballot box''
address will be agreene-issue3+14@pk.greens.org, observable at
http://pk.greens.org/~agreene/votes/issue3+14.
Amy just needs to make an appropriate forwarding alias. If this is the first
such vote, she needs to create the votes
folder.
- Amy invokes her Secure Shell
(she's a Macintosh user) and logs into a shell (the command interpreter)
on petra-k.
- She types the following command to create the directory: