Votorola 0.1.0

[Mark-in-Seattle]

Just a quick post to let the developer Mr. Allan know why; I have
joined this discussion group, hope to contribute and will follow it
with great interest in the future.

My name is Mark Early.  My wife and I live in Seattle, Washington
(USA) where we are active in politics, on the board and/or volunteers
of a few local community non-profits (http://
www.backbonecampaign.org , http://www.washclean.org , http://www.36th.org
, http://www.electbobferguson.com ).  Before my semi-retirement I was
an embedded computer systems designer/engineer having started in
electronics and personal computers in the mid-1970's.

Perhaps because of my technical background when I find something that
could use improvement (politics generally and now public participation
specifically) my instinct is to read, research and discuss with
others, hence my interest in Votorola and issues relating to e-
democracy.  First task; to learn how those more knowledgeable than
myself have approached the problem and what results have taught them.
Then armed with the experience of those before me, develop my own
empirical knowledge thru direct involvement and experiments.  To that
end, I have worked on political campaigns (issue & candidate), spent
time with elected officials, government staff at multiple levels and
citizens who work to change government policies.  These experiences
and much though have lead me to conclude public involvement in the
political process is a vital though extremely difficult component
which must be addressed to achieve the best balance between individual
freedom, social justice and government efficiency.

The seminal book "The Logic of Collective Action - Public Goods and
the Theory of Groups", by Mancur Olson has been particularly
enlightening and at turns discouraging regarding the barriers and
rational dis-incentives to participation by group members. Quoting
from a book review by The Economist - "The existence of a large group
with a common interest does not automatically give rise to collective
action.  There must be individual incentive to join in or there must
be compulsion.  This proposition, together with the notion that small
groups are qualitatively different from large ones, forms the core of
this extremely stimulating book...The range of phenomena it helps to
explain and the number of existing ideas it overthrows are very
considerable...The result is an important contribution to social
science."

Votorola could have a significant part to play in addressing the issue
of public engagement and become a tool I would like to deploy in our
community.  I am working to develop what might be a unique approach
with several benefits; improving citizen participation in local
government, tapping the problem solving ability of citizens at large
and providing more democratic funding for local candidates.  As I
learn more about Votorola I will provide a more concrete description
of this idea.

Thank you for your work.  I look forward to following it with great
interest and contributing in any small way I can.


On Mar 21, 1:23 pm, Michael Allan <m... at zelea.com> wrote:
> This is to inform you of the release of Votorola 0.1.0.  The changes
> in this release are as follows:
>
>   The electoral register is now backed by a neighbourhood trust
>   network.  Commands 'trust' and 'untrust' were added to the front
>   end, allowing voters to submit trust signals for the purpose of
>   cross-authentication.  A channel to Google's geocoding service was
>   added to the back end, enabling signal ranges to be restricted by
>   configuration scripts.  A complete trace of the trust network is now
>   merged with the voter list, enabling administrators to restrict
>   voting to trusted registrants.  This completes the functional core
>   of Votorola, bringing it to alpha.
>
> URLs for the download site and other useful resources can be found at:
>
>  http://zelea.com/project/votorola/
>
> --
> Michael Allan