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Explain the purpose and reasons for this project in the first place.

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Bradley M. Kuhn 2014-02-10 11:09:14 -05:00
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# Why This Fork of GNOME Foundation's Voting System?
When I was setting up Conservancy's ability to run elections for its member
projects, I surveyed various different systems. There are precious few Free
Software voting systems. [Selectricity](http://selectricity.org/) is a good
option, but upon discussions with the primary author, Benjamin "Mako" Hill,
he confirmed that it does not currently implement any of the algorithms
designed for multiple winner elections. So, if you want a preferential
voting system with just one winner, Selectricity is probably the best choice.
Meanwhile, [openstv](http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/openstv) is a
command-line based system that implements all sorts of voting algorithms, but
it has no vote-collection system. (It's also worth noting that openstv has
since been taken proprietary, but older versions that were released as Free
Software are still available.)
GNOME Foundation, noticing this, implemented their own little hacked-together
system to collect votes for their annual Directorship elections, and they
have the code available in their
[GNOME Foundation website repository](https://git.gnome.org/browse/foundation-web/).
This project is a fork of that repository, with *just* the voting stuff
included. Most of the GNOME-isms have been removed, although a few remain.
I've also offered patches back to the GNOME Foundation repository by
cherry-picking changes that are of use to both projects.
Having spent 10-20 hours poking around this PHP code, I must frankly say that
this isn't a well-designed system, and I don't really recommend it. However,
if you need to run a few elections, using this system, by following the
instructions below, might be your quickest way to get an election up and
running. (Note: the instructions herein are loosely based on
[instructions available on the GNOME Foundation's wiki](https://wiki.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee/ElectionsHowTo),
although those instructions are somewhat GNOME specific. I believe these
instructions below are fully self-contained now, such that you don't have to
read the GNOME Foundation's instructions as secondary information).
# Setting up an election # Setting up an election
0. vote/include/election-sql.php expects a secret config file that exists 0. vote/include/election-sql.php expects a secret config file that exists