Election Software Development Update

[Jon Seattle]

Its going quite well! Here is the plan. I would like to run a software beta test the week starting 2 January. Anyone is welcome to participate. I will also make the source code available for download. I plan to release the software under an open source Creative Commons license. (You can all run mini-elections at home )

Sunday 6th of January at 8 AM I will hold a public source code walkthough for anyone who is interested. You should have a little programming and database background to understand what is going on, but advanced skills are not required.

[Jon Seattle]

I am just about ready for initial testing. I plan to do testing with a small group of volunteers the next two days (Thursday and Friday), and the open the system up for public testing on Sunday. If you would like to help, please IM me and I will respond by tomorrow.

The new voting interface, by the way, is a tiny Ajax application with drag-and-drop ranking etc. It looks quite nice.

[Jon Seattle]

Hi All,

I ran into a bit of a snag -- a serious database problem on the server I am using (a null pointer error) and ended up spending a day fighting with it. After a complete re-install of the database software the problem is now fixed! I am going to postpone the code review and reschedule it later in the week. I will start informal testing with the volunteer testers today, and we will also start the public test by Wednesday this week.

Sorry for the delay, but its good to be back on track.

Jon

[Jon Seattle]

Having got though the first round of testing and corrected a few small issues (thanks volunteer testers!) and with the voting (password) machine done, the voting system is now ready for a public test. I will put out voting machines tomorrow (Thursday) morning so we can test for a couple of days before the start of the election.

I will also soon schedule the source code review, but want to fill in source code comments, attach licenses, etc.

Thanks!

[Patroklus Murakami]

Fantastic news! Thank you so much for taking this on for us Jon, the time you have put in to enabling the legislative changes by writing new election software is very much appreciated.