Election Data

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 10:29 AM, CLAY S <clay at brokenladder.com> wrote:
> Let me first thank you all for your input on this.
>

> Some people have countered that in public governmental elections, data is
> not might public.  This is incorrect.  Many cities publish anonymous ballot
> results online.  Here in my home of San Francisco, for instance. (And of
> course, just because the government does something in their election
> process, that doesn't mean it's right - just look at the terrible plurality
> voting system that almost all municipalities use.)
>

The data is only made anonymous for elections after it has been
advertised via legislation that it will be made so. I would prefer
that if research is going to be done on voting.. that it is announced
before the election and what kinds of research and how the data would
be anonymized is listed and approved before it is done so. This way
people are aware of the data being used for research AND that the
method for anonymizing has been publically looked at to make sure it
really anonymizes the data versus rot12's the ip addresses and account
names ;).



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"