Hi guys- I thought maybe you would be interested in a fairly non-labour- intensive way of conducting preferential elections over the web using webforms. This is a technique I just hit upon after a lot of near-misses- (I) Establish a guestbook account with Dreambook (www.dreambook.com) or another similar guestbook provider that allows you to alter and extend your form questions. (II) Nasty labour intensive bit- takes a few minutes to an hour or so depending on the number of candidates or options- change your dreambook account to incorporate a "code" field and as many other fields or even more than the number of candidates or options. Remember the basic names for the fields. Visit the guestbook you have created and view the source... take notice of the reference to <FORM blah blah blah> because this gives the URL you require for later on as well as the protocol for sending, get or post (in the case of dreambook, post). (III) Design your ballot form (Microsoft Word is OK... Make sure you've got the document in html mode). Incorporate a "code" text box and drop down boxes next to candidates' names with a choice amongst "_" and the numbers 1 to however many candidates or options there are (a send button is a good thing also). The fields associated with boxes should be those of the guestbooks above. Make sure the form is constructed with the above URL and protocol for sending in mind. (IV) Test your ballot form. You don't need to upload it to the internet yet- just run it from a local drive and do a test vote (make sure it will be discernible from valid votes!). Then go to your guestbook management and see if your vote has been registered as an entry. If it hasn't, it's more than likely the URL and protocol for sending are wrong- go to the original guestbook and view the source again. Copy the <FORM Blah Blah Blah> bit and then open the source of your ballot form. Replace the <FORM Blah Blah Blah> in your ballot with the one you have copied. See if it works now. (V) If everything works out, upload your ballot form to the web. Next, get the list of voters and use a database or spreadsheet to give each voter a unique code. (VI) (A) (If you have outlook or another mail-mergy e-mail program) Mail merge an invitation to vote which includes a voter's code and the URL of the ballot form. Easy- but for those of us who slave along with pine or eudora- (B) Find out how your e-mail program saves e-mail messages (particularly outbox or postponed) and mimic that in a merge to a text file through Word or similar. Put the thing (using dos or ftp or whatever) into your outbox or postponed-msgs folder and then run your e-mail program. Hopefully it picks up a pile of individual messages to be sent. Send them. Enjoy! Any comments?
