Getting response by email reply message

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Mon, 09 Nov 2015 23:09:50 -0800, zljubisic at gmail.com writes:
>> If what you really need is a voting application, you can look at
>> https://github.com/mdipierro/evote  which the PSF uses for its elections.
>
>It is not a voting application (I will have more than yes/no answers).
>I just want to keep an example simple.
>
>Anyway, I will look into voting application you have suggested in order to see the way how they do it. Thanks.

Their is no demand for 'yes/no answers' -- you can typically vote for
7 people out of 15 candidates for the board, for instance.  But, once
you get to the website you can serve up webpages, using web2py which
presents the voters with a webpage full of whatever you want to render,
including text boxes that let you do arbitrary submissions.

The hard problem being solved here is that only a select list of people
(whom you reach through email) can vote, 
they can do so during some arbitrary period of time (your election period) 
but they do not have to all be on-line at the same time, 
everybody who is legally allowed to vote can change their minds about whom
to vote for and re-submit a vote again, invalidating the earlier one,
and anonymity -- even the election commissioner who holds the election 
does not know who it was that any voter voted for, only that they voted.

And it also keeps track of vote totals.  There are also things to enable
you to present the candidates in different orders for different sets
of voters, as the order in which a list is dished up seems to effect the
outcome, with implications for 'election fairness'.

Thus the whole app is about accountablity.  The tiny web page you serve
up to the people is a tiny bag you bolt into its side. :)  Which makes
the whole thing way, way, way to heavy-weight for most purposes.

However, if accountability is what you need, then it would probably
be easier to adapt the election app to do what you want then to
reinvent all this stuff.

Laura