[MG] Pollserver Federation - Crosstalk between voting systems

[conseo]

>
> I'd like to take this a step further, and backwards, now.  Again,
> please take what I offer as constructive contribution as opposed to
> critique.  I am attempting to leave all critique out of this email,
> and shoudl you feel you encounter any, please give me the benefit of
> the doubt.

 Criticism is not bad imo. Even if it seems to be pretty negative at 
 times,
 if it is really serious it helps to adjust the perspective off the
 problem, so I don't have a problem with it. It shouldn't not be 
 personal
 though.

>
> I've gotten a bit mixed up over the last year that I've been working
> with Thomas and Mike about where authentication takes place.
> Authentication is a huge part of eliminating sock puppets and I don't
> think anybody doubts the utility of it, and there seems to be a 
> number
> of places where authentication touches each of the systems within the
> open architecture Mike has been working on.  Because of this I get a
> little mixed up, and so I preface my next statements by saying that I
> am really not sure how much currently attributed to the Voteserver or
> something else.
>
> Regardless of whether this is the Voteserver or something else, it
> seems to me that we do need a standard for "unique identity" ON THE
> WEB.  It seems to me that it is up to the administrators of each
> polling facility to take into account that polls shared "between
> polling faclilities" will invite voters to create duplicate
> identities, and that their will/must be some form of standard for
> rooting out such duplicates in order for polls that take place across
> multiple servers (each with it's own identity system) to have
> validity.
>
> Based on this need, then, I would say that there is a clear need for
> at least 1 standard that allows all polling facilities to implement
> some form of identity check (that can be verified) to reach a certain
> level of "certainty" that adequate steps, to a certain level of
> certainty, are being taken to eliminate duplicates.

 That is a *very* serious problem in my perspective which has been 
 tackled
 by Mike with a streetwiki/trust-network approach already. Given the 
 fact
 that we live in a non trustworthy society, you definitely don't want to
 expose every political position/reasoning you share. I at least would 
 have
 serious concerns of the consequences if I would openly discuss what the
 structures of power or property should be and try to build a consensus 
 on
 that. Once power is formed through consensus building this is not a
 problem any more, but this obviously is not yet the case. So it is like 
 the
 chicken and the egg problem here.

 The approach that Thomas has proposed to me, was to create "admins" in
 communities which are both trustworthy to the network and the member 
 and
 can prove the identity of every voter when queried. You would have a 
 proxy
 then who protects your official identity from the network. In a trust
 network you can likely create valid admins out of the network as well.

 Still I don't know how you can avoid people registering with different
 admins. Maybe the admins should visit each other regularly and compare 
 addresses
 and identities? But then we don't want a Gestapo like mentality for 
 parts
 of the infrastructure. Best is maybe to try it out once we got that 
 working
 and then tune it to the needs, but this is definitely still unclear to 
 me.
 We should really try to define a way of how to create valid and still
 bearable form of voter registers.
 Note: This issue has not been solved in history of mankind yet either.
 Maybe the sowjets where closest to trying to build a trust network.

>
> Put together then, we would have  an architecture where:
>
> 1.  Individuals and organizations could construct a polling facility
> to meet their needs
> 2.  Implement specific standards within that polling facility for
> Consensus-Building, Authentication, and "eVote 
> Comparisons/Cross-forum
> participation)
> 3.  These polling facilities could then rely on the ability to
> interact across any number of polling facilities across the web.
>
> This would be a set of guidelines that would create a "federation
> standard" that would allow for widespread participation in the 
> "basics
> of consensus building".
>
> I would need to register this personal app with the pollserver, then,
> and "claim" it.
>
> I do beg of you to be kind by slicing and dicing my recommendation
> (and not me) as I do my best to be helpful and not hurtful.  I mean 
> no
> offense in anything I write.  I am simply pointing out something that
> I hope we can continue to work on together.
>
> I realize that there are deep discussion within each of the projects
> about the necessity of this or that widget or rules about
> authentication, but is it not possible that this is one of the
> greatest goals that we could achieve together, and therefore worth
> working towards if for no other reason than the sheer awesome-ness of
> the possibility?

 +1 But we still need to implement it. A standard without a reference
 implementation is pretty useless. We definitely need an open network, 
 no
 matter if you think your platform is best or not, this is a core to
 every serious democracy platform. If your platform is best it will pull
 the users from the open architecture in its implementation, but you 
 might
 never lock them in. This is the principle of competition really being
 identical with the interest of the users.

 Cheers,
 conseo



Originally posted to the mailing list of the Metagovernment Project:
http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org