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. I was mostly looking for something that implemented STV algorithms.

As it turns out, there are precious few Free Software voting systems. Selectricity 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.

Now, if you're looking specifically for range voting, then Fedora's election system probably what you want.

Meanwhile, for various STV algorithms, PpenSTV is your best choice. 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. 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, 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

0. vote/include/election-sql.php expects a secret config file that exists only on the server and is included as PHP code. It's hard coded currently to: /home/admin/secret/anonvoting currently.

   The file should look something like this:

     <?php
         $mysql_host = "localhost";
         $mysql_user = "someuser";
         $mysql_password = "somepassword";
         $mysql_db = "somedb";
         $committee_name = "The Vote Masters";
         $committee_email = "elections@example.org";
      ?>
   

1. When I deploy, I create an account for the election, as the mysql root user:

    mysql -u root -p
    Password: <MYSQLROOTPW>
   

   Then Run these commands at the mysql> prompt:

    CREATE USER 'someusername' identified by 'somepassword';
    CREATE DATABASE somedbname;
   

   Then, exit, and at the main command line run:

    msyql -u root -p -D somedbname < ..../vote/include/schema.sql
   

   Then run this again:

    mysql -u root -p
    Password: <MYSQLROOTPW>
   

   and at the mysql command line, run these grant commands:

    GRANT SELECT on somedb.elections TO someuser@localhost;
    GRANT SELECT on somedb.election_choices TO someuser@localhost;
    GRANT SELECT,DELETE on somedb.election_tmp_tokens TO someuser@localhost;
    GRANT SELECT on somedb.election_voters TO someuser@localhost;
    GRANT SELECT,INSERT on somedb.election_anon_tokens TO someuser@localhost;
    GRANT SELECT,INSERT on somedb.election_votes TO someuser@localhost;
   

2. Create an election, with something like this:

    mysql -u root -D somedb -p
   
    SET NAMES 'utf8';
    INSERT INTO elections (type, name, voting_start, voting_end, choices_nb,   question) VALUES ("elections", "2011 Spring Election", "2011-05-29 00:00:00", "2011-06-12 23:59:59", "7", "Which candidates would you like to see Elected?");
    set @el_id = @@IDENTITY;
    INSERT INTO election_choices (election_id, choice) VALUES
            (@el_id, 'Candidate 1'),
            (@el_id, 'Candidate 2'),
            (@el_id, 'Candidate 3'),
            (@el_id, 'Candidate 4');
    INSERT INTO election_voters (election_id, email_address) VALUES
            (@el_id, 'voter1@example.org'),
            (@el_id, 'voter2@example.org'),
            (@el_id, 'voter3@example.com'),
            (@el_id, 'voter4@example.net');
   
    INSERT INTO election_tmp_tokens (election_id, election_voter_id, tmp_token)
       SELECT @el_id, id, SUBSTRING(MD5(RAND()) FROM 1 FOR 24) AS tmp_token
       FROM election_voters where election_id = @el_id;
   
    select @el_id;
   

   That number you see at the end is this election's id. The URL you'll give out is thus something like: http://example.org/vote.php?election_id=THAT_NUMBER

Dealing With Problems

Missing Ballots

Voters might complain that they haven't received their token. Likely, it either went missing or the email address was wrongly noted in the database. In any case, you need to find the ID of the voter With the ID do something like: SELECT * FROM election_tmp_tokens WHERE election_id = 17 AND election_voter_id = $ID;