[Lnc-business] experience with electronic debate tokens

[Caryn Ann Harlos]

I hear you.  From what I understand working with Mr. Fishman and the
Election Buddy system, we are going to start sending out nominating
tokens at noon on Friday as people check in.  I only had to work with an
email list of delegation chairs today (presumably just 51 addresses) and
still need to resolve issues with 4 of them that I know of.

*In Liberty,*

* Personal Note:  I have what is commonly known as Asperger's Syndrome
(part of the autism spectrum).  This can affect inter-personal
communication skills in both personal and electronic arenas.  If anyone
found anything offensive or overly off-putting (or some other social faux
pas), please contact me privately and let me know. *



On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 3:46 AM Alicia Mattson via Lnc-business <
lnc-business at hq.lp.org> wrote:

> 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
>