state
Jim Powell, Election Chairman/Volunteer


1999
Election Committee
.
Many thanks to our Nomination and Election Volunteers
and
Tim Pierce of Rootsweb!

Navigate this Site
|Regions| |Ballots| |Voting Software| |Note|


 
 
 
 
Regions
Volunteer
Northeast/North Central Region: States: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan,
 New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin
Debbie Axtman
Northwest/Plains Region:
States: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wyoming 
Jerimiah Moerke
Southeast/Mid-Atlantic Region: States: Alabama, Delaware, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia
Ellen Pack
Southwest/South Central:
States: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada,
New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah 
Betsy  Mills
Special Projects
Archives (includes Tombstone)
Census
Jim Powell
          The Official USGenWeb Ballots!
Congratulations to our New Board Members!
Thank you to all members that consented to run in the USGenWeb Elections!
Thank you to all members that took the time to vote!
Special "Run-Off "Vote
 253 : Tim Stowell
  160 : Fred Smoot

National Coordinator Election
Election Ballot

2117 ballots mailed
515 ballots cast

288 : Holly Timm
 At Large Rep 

Election Ballot
2117 ballots mailed
At-Large Representative results - 458 ballots cast
 61 : Gary Martens
 109 : Roger Swafford
 

84 : Tina S. Vickery
NE/NC CC Rep

Election Ballot
643 ballots mailed
Northeast/North Central CC
160 ballots cast
  59 : Ron Eason
   17 : Nate Zipfel

7 : Ginger Hayes
Northeast/North Central SCRep

Northeast/North Central SC Race
Election Ballot.
22 ballots mailed
13 ballots cast
   6 : David Young

9 : Joy Fisher
Northwest/Plains SC Rep

Northwest/Plains SC Race
Election Ballot
  14 ballots cast
   25 ballots mailed
5 : Lynn Waterman

Special "Run-Off" Vote
SE/MA SC Rep ended in an
11 / 11 tie
Shari Handley
Leigh Compton

Southeast/Mid-Atlantic SC Race
Election Ballot
53 ballots mailed
22 ballots cast

  59 : Barbara Dore
2 year CC Rep
52 : Gloria B. Mayfield
1 year CC rep
Southwest/South Central CC Race
Election Ballot
136 ballots cast
 45 : Larry Flesher
  45 : Teresa Lindquist
539 ballots mailed
Special Projects

 
 
Voting Software Used 

The voting software is a package called "UseVote."  It was originally 
designed for taking votes to create new Usenet newsgroups. The USGenWeb voting process is not terribly different from the Usenet ballot system, so we were able to use the same software for these elections with just a few modifications. 

The votes are all sent to vote@usgenweb.org, and are filtered into 
different mail folders, one for each election.  Every few days, I scan 
all of the votes in each folder with a program called "uvvote".  This 
program does some sanity checking on each ballot; it checks that the 
ballot is intact and hasn't been modified, that it can find the e-mail 
address of the person who's voting, and that they haven't broken any 
election rules.  (For example, you can't vote YES on more than one 
candidate for most elections, or more than two candidates for two- 
candidate elections.  You also aren't permitted to vote NO; I added 
that rule since there has apparently been some dispute in the past over 
what NO votes mean and how they should be counted.)  If you submit a 
ballot that broke one of these rules, we'll send you a notice that 
explains what you did wrong and tells you to vote again. 

After this sanity checking is done, I run a short program called 
"checkvoters" on the results.  Checkvoters compares each vote that was 
submitted with the list of eligible voters, and tells me about anybody 
who's not on the eligibility list yet submitted a vote anyway.  I check 
those addresses manually against the eligible voters; they are usually 
trivial variations on the voters' real addresses and are not cause for 
concern.  If I can't tell for sure that the person is an eligible 
voter, I set their vote aside and send them a note asking them to 
contact their SC. 

Once the check of eligible voters is finished, I run a program called 
"domail" that sends ballot acknowledgements to everyone who voted.  If 
their vote was okay (as most are), they get a message that tells them 
*how* their vote was counted, so they can contact us if it looks wrong, 
or vote again if they accidentally voted for the wrong person. The 
`domail' program also alerts voters who submitted incorrect ballots, 
telling them to fix their ballots and vote again. 

After that, I move the list of raw votes that we received and the file 
of processed results to an archive directory and go on to the next 
election. :-) 

After the end of the month, I will collect all of these results files 
for each election, run a program called "uvdup" to eliminate duplicate 
votes from the same person (only the last vote you submit is counted), 
and then run a program called "uvcount" to do the final counts. 

------------------------------ 

The important thing about all of this is that I almost never handle a 
vote manually.  I don't know how anybody voted; it's not necessary for 
me to look at the individual votes.  Most of the time I don't even know 
*who* voted -- I rely on the software to tell me if someone who voted 
doesn't seem to be on our subscriber lists, and to tell me if anybody 
voted more than once in a single election. 

------------------------------ 

Regarding accountability, I'm not sure how to resolve any claims that 
RootsWeb could be distorting the election.  The nature of the USGenWeb elections guarantees that there is no third-party accountability. During the last election, I suggested that the voting process be made into an open process, so that the actual list of voters and how they voted would be posted.  That wasn't a popular suggestion, of course, but it's the most definite way to ensure that there is no vote tampering. 

Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative system 
obfuscator and hack-of-all-trades 
 

Note from the Election Committee:

The above committee members would like to extend a very big "Thank You" to fellow committee member Tim Pierce.  He was there for us and did everything we asked of him.  Thank You Tim.

We as a Committee, believe in the "Will of the Volunteers".
That is our entire reason for working on this committee.  We
have worked well together.  We are proud that we were
allowed to do this.  Now it is your turn.  Check out the
Candidates, and then VOTE.  It is not just your right, but
your responsibility. Good luck to all of the Candidates, and to our Project, USGenWeb.  Do yourself and our Project Proud, VOTE.

Thanks from the Election Committee...
Debbie
Jerimiah
Ellen
Betsy
Yvonne
Tim
Jim
Here to serve you!


Yvonne James-Henderson
for the USGenWeb Election Committee
 Copyright 1999