[OpenStack Foundation] Status: Certification of Election Results

Lloyd Dewolf lloydostack at gmail.com
Tue Aug 28 04:26:17 UTC 2012


We (Jim Blair, Lloyd Dewolf, and Vincent Untz) serving as the election
inspectors for the "2012 OpenStack Board Election" with polls closing
Friday 24 August 2012 17:00 CDT have NOT been able certify the results
previously posted as "Preliminary results" at the link
https://www.bigpulse.com/pollresults?code=2601EKAFniDP554rVJb9RBxx .

The acting Secretary Jonathan Bryce has been working with the BigPulse
team all weekend and through today to resolve a discrepancy between
the Pull Results and the exportable anonymized data. The discrepancy
was 28 "voters" from the "Preliminary results", and has never affected
the rankings. BigPulse engineering identified the cause as being
changing a setting while the polls were open.

The discrepancies between BigPulse engineering's updated Poll Results
and our own summation scripts applied to the exportable
comma-separated values (CSV, ie spreadsheet) are now 1 extra "Voter"
for 7 candidates

Although we have every confidence that all involved parties have acted
in good faith, and have full confidence that the published ranked
ordering is accurate, until the results can be "recounted"
independently, I, Lloyd Dewolf, cannot certify the results.


== Background ==

Voters who needed to resubmit their ballot were unable to do so
because of the combination of settings for weighted voting and
splitting votes which locked ballots from being changed. This affected
voters who had shared their link with others as well as voters who had
a desire to adjust their vote before the poll closed.

Acting Secretary Jonathan Bryce sent BigPulse support an email at
10:03am CDT on Monday, August 20.  BigPulse asked for a voting link to
test, Bryce gave them his and one of their support people called Bryce
at 10:51am and told Bryce that because we were using weighted voting,
Bryce should disable the "Allow vote splitting"
option and it shouldn't affect the outcome. Bryce did that while on
the phone and verified that the resent links were
working. There is no audit log for setting changes during a poll.

== Analysis ==

Since the polls closed we have not been able to derive a method to
duplicate the "Weighted Votes" or "Poll Results" for all candidates
shown in the "Preliminary results". As per above, the discrepancy was
originally 28 "voters" from the "Preliminary results", and has never
affected the rankings.

BigPulse engineering identified that BigPulse support gave acting
Secretary Jonathan Bryce incorrect advice, and that settings should
not have been changed once the poll has started.

Although BigPulse engineering has provided updated Poll Results,
BigPulse engineering has not yet been able to provide results that we
can duplicate from the exportable anonymized data.



Sincerely,
Lloyd Dewolf



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