Some comments

[davidm]

Please excuse these comments if they are repeats or unfounded, I've
tried to understand everything Votorola and want to get a few words
in.

First of all, I am all for the concept, with the understanding that
today it could be used in appropriate circumstances, and in the future
(maybe 10 years) could be a way to better represent a general
populace, that is much more representative, transparent and inclusive
than we can have with our current systems (even if only a percentage
of constituents participated).

I have searched for any actual applications (in the real world) but
haven't seen any.. Has this system been tried anywhere?

I'm curious if you could do a rough simulation in a room with 10
people making a decision and exchanging paper tokens. Contrasting this
simpler idea may make it easier to explain.

A few comments about the code base. It is evident the developer (hi
Michael) is very experienced and has focused on important parts, and I
don't want to sound presumptuous. But last I looked, the code base
would be more difficult for a third party to participate in because it
uses a mix of languages (Java and Perl), is platform specific
(requires *nix), one specific database (Postgres) and the low level
code (database, etc) is mixed with high level application code through
exceptions, for example (and the domain code has some pretty low level
stuff in it). None of this would be difficult to fix, for example,
switch to Ant or Maven (and use a more standard, comprehensible at a
glance layout), use a database interface or at least alternatively
support a self contained database like JavaDB/Derby, and use
RuntimeExceptions (that still throw a stack trace) when appropriate.
This would result in a code base that is easier for people to
participate in, and as importantly set up, with one click installs on
any operating system being possible.

Again I recognize that the developer may have made this choices
because the code base isn't ready for popular use. With encouragement
I'd be willing to work on these aspects of the system.

I'd be interested in participating in, supporting or just learning
about any applications (and eventually support local applications).
I'm located in Montreal and travel frequently to Toronto.

Regards,

David