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Q:
Do you support candidate bios as a link beside each candidate on the ballot?
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A:
Yes. You can either configure the ballot to link to a specific page for each candidate
that you will host on your organization web site, or you can upload bio text
for each candidate. We do not host candidate photos but your uploaded bio text
can include an <img src="..."> tag to include an image you host on your site or on
an image hosting site such as Flickr or Picassa.
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Q:Do you support write-in choices on the ballot.
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A:
Yes. Simply use 'Write-in' as the name of the last candidate for a ballot question,
and, as you will see with (preview ballot), the system turns that into a write-in
choice with a text-entry box for the voter to enter a candidate name. Write-in answers
are included in the vote result report.
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Q:What kind of customer support is available?
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A:
Support for voting administrators for setting up and administering elections is
available by email (and phone or phone-back if necessary,
depending on complexity of the setup or issue.)
Email support is also available for voters in the rare case they have trouble
logging in to vote.
VotingPlace.net is committed to "the level of customer support it takes to make it a complete success."
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Q:What do I do if my voters list data will not upload?
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A:
First, verify a number of things about your .csv voter data file:
- Does the first row (text line) of the csv file contain names of data fields
(i.e. Does first row look literally like: First name,Last name,Email etc,) rather than first line containing
a data record for a voter. Actual voter data must start on line two of the .csv file.
You can check this by viewing the .csv file in a plain-text-file editor like notepad, vim, or textmate.
- Does the .csv file contain any "weird" characters? Examples of characters that will not
work are:
- curly single quotes in names like O'Brien. Note that the single quote just expressed here
is a simple 'vertical' ASCII character single-quote.
- long dash characters. MS-Word or Excel sometimes insert an extra-long dash instead of
a regular ASCII - . These will not work.
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Accented characters: e acute or a grave etc. when these come from Excel or Word documents. VotingPlace.net WILL
accept voter names with these accents, but ONLY if the .csv file is properly encoded in
UTF-8 format. Consult our customer service if you absolutely require these characters in
your voter names and are having a problem with them.
- Are the data fields in the file consistent with the (edit voter identification) data field names?
- Are there any repeated voter records in the file? Or across all voter files uploaded for the election. These are not allowed.
- Are there any blank lines in the .csv file (even at the end of file)? These are not allowed.
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Q:How do I put my organization logo on the
voter login page and the ballot?
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A:
As administrator, go to (view account/...) then (edit organization info).
Then click (brand your ballot) and upload a .gif, .png, or .jpg image of
your organization logo. Instructions displayed at the upload dialog
give you more info on acceptable image size and content.
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Q: I've heard that computerized voting is not secure. Is that true?
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A:
The fear, uncertainty, and doubt that is spread about computerized voting is probably largely based on fear of something new, and fear of something that might be considered too complex to be readily understood by many voters. This latter point is a legitimate concern. Certainly, if a computerized voting system operated using secret computer code, known
only to its makers, one would have a good case for doubting the objectivity or accuracy of the vote tally.
So how could we trust a computerized voting system? The best answer
is that we might be able to trust a computerized, network-based
voting system if the system architecture of the system were open
for inspection, and
all of the software of the system, including
the network data-transport encryption layer, and the ballot
collecting user interface layer, and the data storage layer
and its encryption algorithm, and the vote tallying algorithms
were all open for code inspection. Any party with a stake in a
vote result should be free to employ whatever computer experts
they wish to inspect the software code and the system architecture
to satisfy themselves that the system is not
disadvantaging them somehow.
It should be pointed out that traditional paper ballot voting systems are not very secure, nor very accurate. It is possible to "misplace" large numbers of ballots.
It is possible to have bias in the interpretation of the voting marks made on ballot papers,
or mis-counting. Also, it is relatively easy for voters to make ballot marking errors,
resulting in significant percentages of unintentionally spoiled ballots.
Since voters traditionally must congregate in a small number of places to cast their vote,
it is possible for voter intimidation to occur. So the bar that an online, computerized voting system must
surpass in order to have more reliable results is, it must be admitted on reflection, not that high.
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Q: Can I have a programmer or computer security professional look at your
system architecture and software code to analyze its security and anonymity provisions, and to analyze
the correctness of its vote tallying algorithms?
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A: Yes. Legitimate organizations considering using VotingPlace.net will be given access to inspect all VotingPlace.net source code, and will be given a description of the system architecture, upon signing a non-disclosure agreement.
The code for encrypted network data-transport is the Apache2 http server in SSL mode
using the OpenSSL library, also readily
locatable and inspectable. The operating system is Ubuntu linux
server edition with an IPTABLES firewall.
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Q: How do you ensure that no-one can find out which way someone voted?
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A: The process of authenticating a voter and determining whether they have voted yet is kept completely separate from the process of recording the voter's ballot choices. The ballot choices are stored completely separately from voter-identifying records. All completed e-ballots are transported to the VotingPlace.net servers using SSL connections, and the ballots are hard-encrypted before being stored, anonymous, in our databases.
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Q:But our organization needs an open vote, where we know who voted how.
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A: VotingPlace.net also supports open votes, where administrators have access
to each ballot with the name of the voter attached. This requires special configuration, as it is not
the default setup. Talk to customer support if you need this. It must be arranged before the voting
occurs.
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Q: I am concerned about uploading lists of my eligible voters (that is, my organization's members) to VotingPlace.net.
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A: All voter records are transported to the VotingPlace.net servers using SSL connections, and the voter records are hard-encrypted before being stored in our databases.
Voter records remain the property of the organization using VotingPlace.net, and will not be used by VotingPlace.net
for any purpose other than the conduct of voting, nor disclosed by VotingPlace.net except at the direction of the organization.
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Q: What encryption algorithm do you use to encrypt ballots, voter records, and vote results when they are stored in the VotingPlace.net database?
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A: VotingPlace.net currently uses the Blowfish cipher designed by Bruce Schneier, supplemented by chaff and salt. The implementation is the pycrypto library.
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Q: How do you ensure that the system is available throughout the time when our voters would want to vote, and that their votes are safely recorded?
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A: VotingPlace.net uses redundant vote recording servers that cross-backup each other in near real-time using MySQL database replication. Should a server go down or become inaccessible, alternate
servers continue to operate during the voting period.
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