dewey@sequoia.UUCP (Dewey Henize) (11/16/89)
In article <98222@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> tavi.rice.edu!ti-csl!gwydion@cs.utexas.edu (Basalat Ali Raja) writes: ] ]The final vote tally is: ] ] yes votes: 145 ] no votes: 28 ] in favour: 117 ] ] ]I am sorry about the delay, but my home machine suffered a ]disk crash right after the voting period ended, and I was ]unable to retreive any of the files containing the votes off ]there for a while. ] Apparently there's more problem than that. I know I tried several times to vote on this. No response, no bounce, and I'm not in the list. ]with the vote; in many cases the names are missing. The ]addresses are also, in some cases, not absolute addresses ]but addresses offset from my home site. I'm NOT crying fraud here. But something is really wrong with these votes. I have a lot of trouble believing that this issue generated such low turnout after all the discussion, and I also really have a problem with the addresses. Scanning over it, there are very few that aren't internet sites, as if the various uucp sites didn't get there at all. I DO suspect a mailer somewhere that's busted. ]I have not included any forwarded votes for which I was unable ]to contact the original voters; there were a few of these, ]however all of these people voted yes (there were no forwarded ]no votes). Generally speaking, though, if you received a By the way, what's this about forwarded votes? I thought a person voted, not asked someone else to vote. Again, not a cry of FRAUD, but I'd really like to hear about this innovation. ]personal acknowledgement from me, your name should be here. ] ]I have included the names of the voters when they were sent ] ]Once again -- a summary - the newsgroup name is soc.religion.islam ]and the proposed moderators are ] ]Naim Abdullah [naim@eecs.nwu.edu] ]Shari VanderSpek [shari@wpi.edu] ]Behnam Sadeghi [oxy!sadeghi@csvax.caltech.edu] ] ] ]My thanks to everyone who voted. ] ]Regards, ]Basalat Ali Raja. List of votes deleted. See article <98222@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> for the list posted. -- | ...!cs.utexas.edu!execu!dewey or | "If you will just quit shouting at me, I | | ...uunet!execu!dewey | will try to hear what you are saying" | | Execucom and I often have different ideas. THESE are mine, ok? Ok. |
gwydion@tavi.rice.edu (Basalat Ali Raja) (11/16/89)
In article <968@sequoia.UUCP> dewey@sequoia.UUCP (Dewey Henize) writes: >Apparently there's more problem than that. I know I tried several times >to vote on this. No response, no bounce, and I'm not in the list. I believe the rules state that the vote must arrive at the vote-takers machine if it is to be considered valid. I cannot be held responsible for votes that I did not get, as I am sure you will agree. I did suggest that you attempt contacting one of the moderators if you had trouble getting to me, and I would attempt to get a path to you. I also acknowledged all entires and in my call for votes posting I said that if you did not recieve an acknowledgement, you would know that I had not received your vote; as there are three moderators in totally different part of the country, your mail should have gotten SOMEWHERE... >votes. I have a lot of trouble believing that this issue generated such >low turnout after all the discussion, and I also really have a problem >with the addresses. Scanning over it, there are very few that aren't >internet sites, as if the various uucp sites didn't get there at all. That is possible... I don't know what to do about it; I am sure there are a lot of people reading this who do, however... :-) >]I have not included any forwarded votes for which I was unable >]to contact the original voters; there were a few of these, >]however all of these people voted yes (there were no forwarded >]no votes). Generally speaking, though, if you received a > >By the way, what's this about forwarded votes? I thought a person voted, >not asked someone else to vote. Again, not a cry of FRAUD, but I'd really >like to hear about this innovation. As I understand it, votes received at my machine ONLY were valid votes. Some people were unable to send their votes to me - they got a friend to forward it for them; I wasn't sure about whether they counted or not. So I left them out; as ALL of them were "yes" votes, it would not invalidate the result. Although I appreciate your generosity, to be honest with you, I do not think you could shout "FRAUD" on this one - I do not know of any rule or guideline which states that a person cannot solicit votes from friends for a newsgroup that he/she approves/disapproves of. I made no such solicitations personally, but I do not see why that should stop anyone else...
naim@eecs.nwu.edu (Naim Abdullah) (11/16/89)
dewey@sequoia.UUCP (Dewey Henize) writes (regarding the voting results for soc.religion.islam) : >Apparently there's more problem than that. I know I tried several times >to vote on this. No response, no bounce, and I'm not in the list. Last year when Basalat ran the vote for talk.religion.islam this happened to several people. It was sometimes hard to get mail to tavi.rice.edu. This is why this time, there was an alternative machine to send your votes if mail to tavi.rice.edu bounced. As a last resort, you could send your votes to one of the moderators who would forward the vote to Basalat. Basalat did not count the forwarded votes if he couldn't get in touch with the original voter. They were all YES anyway. You should have tried one of the alternative machines to get your vote to Basalat or you should have sent your vote to one of the moderators who would have forwarded your vote. These instructions were mentioned in the call for votes. >I'm NOT crying fraud here. But something is really wrong with these >votes. I have a lot of trouble believing that this issue generated such >low turnout after all the discussion, Well, compared to what goes on in news.groups, there was hardly a lot of discussion. When Basalat proposed the group, there was some concern expressed about whether critical articles about Islam would be acceptable in the group. I posted the moderator guidelines for the group and the discussion died down very quickly. The discussion never reached a very high volume. > and I also really have a problem >with the addresses. Scanning over it, there are very few that aren't >internet sites, as if the various uucp sites didn't get there at all. How can you judge whether a site is an Internet site or a uucp site ? Let me make a couple of points: 1) The format of the name is not enough. For example, people mailing from uucp sites do NOT necessarily have addresses of the form "foo@bar.uucp". Nor do they necessarily have an address of the form "x!y!z". I know of at least one site on the voting list that is a uucp site but has an address that looks indistinguishible from an Internet address. Some of us do have working mailers :-). 2) Most educational institutions are on the Internet. Unless you can provide more evidence that the uucp sites were ignored, I think your criticism does not carry much weight. >By the way, what's this about forwarded votes? I thought a person voted, >not asked someone else to vote. Again, not a cry of FRAUD, but I'd really >like to hear about this innovation. The forwarded votes mentioned by Basalat were those that were mailed by the voter to the moderator, since the voter could not get their vote to tavi.rice.edu or the alternative voting address. The moderator forwarded the vote to Basalat exactly as received. I think there was a total of 4 or 5 such cases (ball park figure). As Basalat mentioned, such votes were not counted unless he was able to confirm the vote with the original sender. My, you are a suspicious bunch :-) . Naim