[governance] Results of charter amendment vote

[Paul Lehto]

Re: Norbert Klein's comment: "I hope it is a system where some basic
confidentiality is maintained - I thought I was casting a secret
ballot, no?"

FWIW, in the past I've specialized in elections and election law,
particularly voting systems, at levels up to and including
Congressional election contests in the USA. I currently write in this
area.

While I do not oppose the secret ballot in a typical election with the
public voting if there is any real risk at all of intimidation or
retaliation for one's vote the very important and often-missed fact of
the secret ballot is this:

The secret ballot makes an election system radically UNauditable.
That is, by destroying any connection between the ballot and its
owner, it is impossible to verify if the ballot was altered or changed
in any way after being cast, but before being counted. (For example,
some voters vote for too many candidates and this results in a vote
for none. It's impossible to say except in extremely sloppy cases,
whether that's the voter's own doing or somebody altering the ballot
afterward to cancel out "enemy" votes.)

However, if the ballots are all counted promptly on election night and
the ballots are all secure and untamperable during the election day or
early the next morning without a complete break in counting, then with
secure chain of custody thus accomplished we can ignore the
unauditability problem created by ballot secrecy.

However, in all cases where there is a substantial lapse of time of a
day or many days, in all elections at least one party raises the
issue, which is inevitably present, of whether the ballots have been
secure, or whether they can EVEN IN THEORY be made secure, if the
usual situation of elections obtains and the government, whose own
power and composition is being determined by the ballots, also has
custody of the very ballots that determine its own power.

For the above reasons, the best practice in voting systems is to
consider ballots to be the most perishable of produce, so to speak,
that spoil if they leave the ballot box or the balloting location or
are stored for more than a day or so.  In the case of polling places,
additional workers can and should be brought in to do the counting,
different from those who took in the ballots, and all problems of
having enough personnel are easily solved if we use the same system as
that for summonsing jurors to serve as jurors.  No task could be more
important than counting votes, and it deserves every bit of scrupulous
attention and effort it can get.

Paul Lehto, Juris Doctor

PS I'm not expressing an opinion on the IGC vote, I have "no evidence"
as they say and don't intend to try to get any evidence myself.  That
being said, the circumstances of the vote, combined with the secret
ballot Mr. Klein wishes for,  combine to create a situation in which
it is always rational, and even prudent, to be vigilant regarding
elections and therefore we can not rule out the possibility of
election error or fraud before full investigation is completed, if
such investigation is even allowed, and presuming such error or fraud
is actually potentially detectable.


On 9/26/09, Norbert Klein <nhklein at gmx.net> wrote:
> Danny Younger wrote:
>> Ian,
>>
>> The Charter tells us that a charter amendment must be approved by no less
>> than two-thirds (2/3) of the members of the IGC.
>>
>> To put to rest any concerns that we might have, would you might be good
>> enough to tell us
>> (1)  the total number of IGC members
>> (2)  how many votes were cast in the affirmative and how many in the
>> negative on the day that the coordinators decided to extend the election.
>>
>> One would hate to think that the election process was gamed through the
>> extension of voting so that the 2/3 threshhold could be met.
>>
> Surprise - I do not know what kind of election system is being used, but
> I hope it is a system where some basic confidentiality is maintained - I
> thought I was casting a secret ballot, no?
>
> Or was somebody checking the ballots as they came in, day-by-day,
> putting then into a bookkeeping system on who voted when and how? I hope
> that this was NOT the case - and if it was, I strongly suggest that we
> will use a different electoral system next time.
>
> Norbert Klein
>
> --
> If you want to know what is going on in Cambodia, please visit
> The Mirror, a regular review of the Cambodian language press in English.
>
> This is the latest weekly editorial of the Mirror:
>
> Pchum Ben – Days of Gathering to Make Offerings for Those Remembered and for
> Those Forgotten – Sunday, 20.9.2009
> http://tinyurl.com/n8v8fa
>
> (To read it, click on the line above.)
>
> And here is something new every day:
> http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com
>
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-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box #1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
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906-204-4026
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