[Lnc-business] experience with electronic debate tokens

[Alicia Mattson]

As you're aware, the Convention Oversight Committee is finishing a project
of collecting electronic debate qualification tokens from our delegates.

We sent the invitations out on Tuesday morning, and then I spent most of
the next day and a half communicating with people who said they didn't
receive it, determining whether there was a problem I could fix, and
resolving those.  The outcome is important, and I wanted to help every
delegate participate if they wanted to.

There were email addresses that bounced, family members sharing a single
email address, email addresses who had previously opted out of receiving
emails from the Survey Monkey service we used, email addresses which had at
some prior date bounced when Survey Monkey tried to email them so the
system refused to attempt to send to that address again, people watching
the wrong email account, mail providers which put the emails not just in
the spam folder but in some cases in the trash folder, etc.

I made a list of everyone who contacted me, tracked my notes for each
person, marking who was fixed and who was still pending resolution.  In the
end, there were a handful of delegates that it was just impossible to get
the emails to -- the internet monster ate it, one whose email provider just
automatically opts-out on behalf of the user, the bounce history between
the sender/receiver, etc.  For that handful of delegates the only way I
found for them to participate was for them to email their choices to me,
and I'm going to manually add those records to the results file before the
totals are calculated.

Do you know what the MOST COMMON solution to the problem was when someone
said they didn't receive the invite?  Just waiting 24 hours.  John Doe
didn't receive it, checked spam, checked trash, contacted me, I research,
he's looking in the right email account...wait overnight and suddenly the
message popped out of the internet and into his inbox.

What's my point?

Just sending an email to 1046 delegates isn't the end of the story.  It
took a very long time and a lot of work to make sure that all who wanted to
could participate in this electronic "vote."

If we imagine that during the online event this weekend, an admin can hit a
button and within a short period of time all delegates present in Zoom will
suddenly and reliably receive a mass email and be able to respond...we're
fooling ourselves.  Some delegates didn't get the debate token email for a
full day; some never did.

This weekend we're going to encounter similar problems distributing
nominating tokens, with what I think is planned for checking quorum, etc.
I don't know how each state is conducting their election votes, but if
they're a larger state using email voting systems, guess what...

In a real convention, we would never conduct a vote in which some delegates
present in the hall didn't get ballots.

This weekend, if in the interest of time, we don't wait for all
participants to receive whatever is being sent out, and we just forge ahead
anyway after a relatively short time window thinking "Oh well, too bad!
Most of us got it," then we're depriving some participants of their
rights.  Sure, the vast majority may get theirs quickly, but if you're the
one who doesn't, you're going to be very upset, and rightly so.

These sorts of bulk email delivery problems are things that hide in the
background of the internet, things that only IT people have to think
about.  The way we have chosen to proceed this weekend is likely going to
bring those IT realities to the forefront.

-Alicia