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Previous by Date: Subject: Re: E-ballot Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:49:51 EDT Author: Eileen Segal |
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Dear Neal, I want to congratulate you for asking the members of the Division about their opinion concerning the petition up for vote at Philadelphia. I wish more councilors would do it so that their vote would be more representative of the members they represent. Let me add my views to the discussion. So far the responses seems to favor the vote on the Internet, but I have some reservation. Certainly I do not have a problem with election in the Divisions and Local Sections, but for national offices I think we should be very careful. As we know in most Divisions and Local Sections there is not a long line for the various positions, frequently lots of arm-twistings have to applied to put together a slate. This is not the case for national offices. We have a large number of interested candidates who would like to be nominated, but the Nominating & Election Committee frequently ignores them and therefore we have more and more petition candidates. As you know in the Fall election we five petition candidates for various Board positions, a record number. This makes it very important that the election is run under conditions which are beyond any doubts. In the newspaper we frequently read about errors in voting machines. I rather face the possibility that some loose or indented chad might not be easily counted, but I am more concerned that a computer error accidentally adds the vote for Candidate A to the tally of Candidate B. Also hacking is more and more often in the headlines. While I doubt that a teenage hacker in Norway would be interested in breaking into the ACS voting, but I am uneasy about the possibility that someone could acquire the services of an “expert” to alter the election and no one would find it out. In our present system the paper ballots are kept for 30 days to make a recount if needed. Finally I am also concerned that the electronic voting will discourage some people to vote, especially if they are not a regular Internet surfer. If we will have the opportunity for paper and electronic ballot probably one has to declare which way is the preferred one. What happens if the e-mail address is changed? Or if C&EN would list a webpage address to vote, it would be much more easy for someone to forget about voting. Overall I doubt that it would improve voting. Perhaps the first step should be to run tests for Divisional and Local Section elections and see the problem and whether it improves participation. Presently we have six weeks for someone to use a paper ballot which can be a continuous reminder to vote. In my younger age I lived in a country where people revolted against meaningless elections and were willing to die for it. No one knows really the value of a free election, unless there was a time when you were denied the right to it. What we should do to conduct a campaign to persuade people to use their privilege. Making it available will not promote more interest in national election. I just sent out a letter to voting councilors discussing the importance of the election. I hope we are not going to rush into this without carefully evaluating the problems. Thanks again for taking the initiative and discussing it with the members of our Division. With best regards Attila E. Pavlath ACS President 2001
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