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2008 Presidential Nomination Poll
This poll will open at 9pm Eastern on June 15th and remain open for 24 hours. All party members may vote. The method is "approval voting" -- members may vote for as many of the candidates as they want. For further details, see Article 11, Section O of the bylaws. The winner of this process (or NOTA) will be the Boston Tea Party's 2008 presidential nominee.
Charles Jay
76% (28 votes)
None of the Above
24% (9 votes)
Robert Milnes
14% (5 votes)
Total voters: 37
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planetaryjim:
I would like to congratulate Charles Jay on becoming our nominee for the office of president of these united States of America.
I would like to thank Robert Milne for joining the party and running a good race.
I would like to thank the members for voting in this election.
PeterOrvetti:
It looks like we've got a ticket
PeterOrvetti:
So what happens if we nominate NOTA for president and a candidate for VP? Does the VP candidate ascend to the top of the ticket? We can't just list a VP candidate on state ballots.
planetaryjim:
The character of the voting has changed dramatically. This seems to be clearly due, in part, to a number of new and sequential registrations. I have notified Tom Knapp of the issues, and I've begun examining some of the tracking information available to us. I suspect an attempt to spam the poll.
The interesting thing, so far, is that the VP poll is tied with none of the above. We actually have a presidential nominee at this point in time.
PeterOrvetti:
It's like a virtual Barr Bus!
Maybe in the future it would make sense to temporarily close account creation during conventions to prevent floor-packing.
planetaryjim:
Peter, it does seem that way. I'm not sure, but I suspect that closing account creation during conventions would require a bylaws change. It would also not prevent something like this from happening, since a reasonably prepared group could simply create spam users in advance.
The other side of that same coin is that there are users created who seem to interrupt the sequence and may be legit users. These users tend to do alarmingly intelligent things given Bryan Caplan's reporting on the difficulties with normal voter behavior.
Distinguishing elements are identifiable, and I'm working with Tom to find the extent of the problem, as well as an effective solution.
admin:
Jim,
I think you're right that closing account creation during conventions as a general practice would require a bylaws change.
However, doing so as an emergency site administration measure when the site is under attack just makes sense ... so I've done exactly that.
The next steps are to ascertain which accounts are fake, if they voted in the poll, HOW they voted if so, and what should be done about it.
I'll be sending you a report and recommendations on all that by email in a few minutes -- a report I assume you'll react to in whatever way you deem correct as chair, subject of course to overturn by the national committee or the membership.
Regards,
Tom Knapp
planetaryjim:
Well, I don't particularly like our available options. But, for now, closing the new member account creation process seems reasonable.
Unfortunately, a number of the new users are both attracted to the poll because something is happening here, and are apparently visiting parts of the site to indicate reflection on the candidates and issues. Thus, we are being screwed out of legitimate new members by the action of this vicious little spammer.
Yes, I'll probably react to your report when I see it. Yay.
planetaryjim:
We continue to review the situation, and Tom Knapp is doing the heavy lifting on fixing the problems we've identified.
planetaryjim:
It does appear that "none of the above" was the preferred choice of the attacker. Whether that is someone trying to win one for NOTA or motivated to keep us off the ballots nationwide because the state governments don't like NOTA as a ballot option, I'm not yet clear. But, I am happy to see the spurious votes removed.
And, just in case someone feels I'm biased against NOTA, that was how I cast both my votes in this election. Partly because I truly favor NOTA in most situations, and partly to suggest that the party chair not show bias in the nominations process. If I can create a tradition in this regard that the chair not even vote for a preferred candidate, I think that would be much, much better than what appears to be going on in the LP - with the chair and staff actively working for a pre-selected candidate's primary campaign.
Mike Theodore:
As people registering just to vote in this nomination seem to be getting weird looks, let me try and defend that decision. The Boston Tea Party is an excellent tool for the future of liberty and freedom in this country. Although it is not hard to acknowledge that it's candidate will never win the presidency. In essence, I see it as a way for angry Libertarians to defect somewhere, and the LP will have to try and earn their votes, not just expect them to vote for them.
Now in my opinion, registering seems to not allow that much. Besides voting, you can post in the blogs and what not. Although I now have means to do that now, I won't be spending my life in there. That is the reason I only registered to vote, although I will be drifting aimlessly amongst your blogs.
planetaryjim:
Mike, you are very welcome here.
There's no problem with registering to be a member of the party for purposes of voting, once, in the election.
We had to look at the one who registered 12 times to vote 12 times.
admin:
Mike,
I don't think that anyone is getting "weird" looks for registering at the last minute. Several people registered at the last minute, or even after polling began, and they were welcome to do so.
What got the "weird look" was a sudden spate of registrations followed by poll voting and no other site access. Upon investigation, it turned out that these registrations were also from the same IP and that a fraudulent vote drive was under way (upon cancellation of the votes, they all turned out to be identical, which was another indicator that something was going on). Something had to be done about that. Shutting down registration was a necessary first step, for the simple reason that the fraudsters could probably easily register new accounts and cast votes faster than we could detect which registrations were fraudulent and shut them down.
We'll be looking into ways to keep the process as open as humanly possible, but I suspect that what will be required is:
a) Shutting down new registration 24 hours in advance of future nominating polls so that there's no "avenue of quick attack;" and
b) A credentials/audit committee to work with the site admin in detecting and shutting down fraudulent "vote-packing" ops on an ongoing basis, with a focus before conventions.
My PERSONAL goals are:
- To be as trustworthy as possible in helping assure honest processes; and
- To give the party the tools to verify that trustworthiness ... or to replace me if it can't.
Regards,
Tom
ElfNinosMom:
LFV has exposed the source of the fraudulent votes.
http://lastfreevoice.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/btp-fraud-exposed/
Mike Theodore:
Thank you for the clarification.
brokenladder:
Approval Voting, is an excellent voting method, but can be substantially improved by increasing the number of "scores" from 0-1 to 0-10, or 0-99. We call this "Range Voting" (technically, Approval is just the simplest form of Range).
http://rangevoting.org/AppExec.html
Here are some social utility efficiency values from computer simulations, showing that Range Voting is much more representative (even when you factor in strategic voting) than Approval Voting.
http://rangevoting.org/AppExec.html
Mike Theodore:
Folks, does anyone know where I can find the debate? I went to that Ron Paul Radio thing that IPR gave me, but they had nothing for Saturday(7 p.m.).
inDglass:
It is rebroadcasting constantly over the RPI stream until the vote closes. There is no archived mp3 available at this time. Here are the links to the streams.
Broadband
http://www.rpiradio.com/listen/broadband.m3u
Dial-up
http://www.rpiradio.com/listen/dialup.m3u
planetaryjim:
http://bostontea.us/node/74
Mike Theodore:
I went to Ron Paul Radio, but there doesn't appear to be any archive. Meh, voting ends at the end of today, it doesn't make that much of a difference.
planetaryjim:
under broadband and dial up buttons, he said on another thread.
admin:
Y'all,
The bylaws specify that candidates will be listed on the poll in alphabetical order -- and that's how I entered them, by last name. Apparently the polling software RE-ordered them for some reason. Sorry about that.