[Ratification-discuss] [voter-registration at r6rs.org: Please confirm your registration.]

[Alan Bawden]

   From: Aubrey Jaffer <agj at alum.mit.edu>
   Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 08:17:41 -0400 (EDT)

   I finally received a registration confirmation email.  But
   which of the 2 registration emails that I sent is it
   confirming?

A handful of people sent in multiple registration forms.  In all
but two cases all submitted copies were identical (as determined
by `equal?').  In those two cases, I will be asking the submitter
what he or she wants to do.

You are one of the people who submitted several -identical-
registration forms, so in your case I do not see how it makes any
difference which one the confirmation message is replying to.

   Is it even confirming a registration that I sent?

It -is- possible for a third party to submit a registration form
with your address in the email-address field -- perhaps including
a statement-of-interest that says something you might not like
(but that would still somehow appear to be a case for why -you-
should be allowed to vote...).  But the only way such a malicious
registration attempt could fail to come to our attention during
the registration period is if your -own- registration form was
somehow lost.  In that unlikely event, nobody would discover the
prank until we made everybody's statements public after the
registration period ended.  I presume you would then bring this
to our attention.  That would certainly count as the kind of
"irregularity" where the Steering Committee would want to "take
appropriate action".  (Quoting from the process description.)

Even if you -never- noticed the prank, you would still be allowed
to vote, and nobody else would have gained the ability to vote
illegally.

Or is there some other threat we are overlooking?  We created
this mailing list in part in the hopes that people would point
out possible threats to the integrity of the process that we had
not thought of.  Are we leaving the door open to some form of
cheating that we all overlooked when the original process
description was published?

   The confirmation email needs to include some context (such as
   envelope information or essay text) from the registration
   email.

In point of fact, it does include the Message-ID of the instance
of your registration that the system first encountered, but there
is no real -need- to include even that.  But yes, If I was
polishing this system up for wider use, I might quote back the
Subject: of the original message just because that is what people
have come to expect.

   ------- Start of forwarded message -------
   X-Originating-IP: [18.7.21.145]
   Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 03:04:09 -0400
   From: voter-registration at r6rs.org
   To: agj at alum.mit.edu
   Subject: Please confirm your registration.
   Auto-Submitted: auto-replied
   In-Reply-To: <20070528011345.A93FE51D7C0 at smtp.voluntocracy.org>