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'''Electowidget''' is a PHPPHP4 library (initally a plugin for MediaWiki) designed to make it possible to conduct Internet polls and elections using many different [[wikipedia:Voting systems|voting systems]], including the [[Wikipedia:Schulze method|Schulze method]], [[Wikipedia:Instant runoff voting|Instant runoff voting]], [[Wikipedia:Approval voting|Approval voting]], and even plain old [[Wikipedia:Plurality|Plurality]]. It also assists in explaining different election methods by providing an easy way of tallying example elections, and comparing the results as computed by different elections. The modular design allows for plugging in new election tallying methods, different ballot designs, and different ballot formats.
It was in active development in 2005, with additional development as late as 2009, but has not seen updates since then. <s>View the Bitbucket source code repository</s> to get the code. (NOTE: Atlassian removed Mercurial support, but thankfully the SoftwareHeritage.org folks created an archive: [https://bitbucket-archive.softwareheritage.org/projects/ro/robla/electowidget.html softwareheritage.org: robla/electowidget]).
Latest news:
* October 29, 2005 - Initial Electowidget release! (version 0.1.0)
If development resumes, information will be available at https://electorama.com/electowidget
{{Electowidget Infopanel}} ▼
== AboutExample ==
Here's an example of a call to the very, very crude Electowidget Lua module
<code>
Electowidget is a plugin for MediaWiki designed to make it possible to conduct Internet polls and elections using many different [[wikipedia:Voting systems|voting systems]], including the [[Wikipedia:Schulze method|Schulze method]], [[Wikipedia:Instant runoff voting|Instant runoff voting]], [[Wikipedia:Approval voting|Approval voting]], and even plain old [[Wikipedia:Plurality|Plurality]].
<nowiki>
▲{{ #invoke:Electowidget Infopanel|get_data}}
</nowiki>
</code>
The beginning of the results should look something like the following:
Electowidget isn't designed for secure public elections. Rather, it's designed for the types of informal polls and elections that currently happen on wikis today. It's also designed as a tool to help election theorists provide comparitive examples of how a given result will be tabulated comparing multiple different systems.
<code>
{
"version":"0.1",
"candidates":
{
"Kiss":
{
"display_name":"Bob Kiss (Progressive)"
},
"Montroll":
{
"display_name":"Andy Montroll (Democrat)"
},
</code>
...and then continue to spill all of the JSON from [[2009 Burlington, Vermont Mayoral Election data]].
As of 2023-09-12, [[User:RobLa]] is focusing most of his work on [[ABIF]], and mostly on the Python tooling. However, there is a start on a Lua-based implementation of ABIF over on the "[[Module:ABIF]]" page.
All data is stored on wiki pages, in [http://json.org JSON format]. That means that there's an audit trail for every change that is made to the wiki.
[[Category:Electowidget]]
== Example elections ==
Here's a few example elections. Unless otherwise noted, the configurations for these elections are protected (to ensure that the examples remain in a usable state), but they will all have read/write counterparts that you can play with (currently hosted on a test site that may go up and down)
* [[Electotest:Election:10 TV Shows]] - an example based on the top 10 season passes on TiVo.
** [[Electotest:Election:10 TV Shows (editable)|Editable version]]
* [[Electotest:Election:Mock U.S. Presidential Election, combined 2000 and 2004]] - mock election with the nominated candidates for U.S. President from all major and most ballot-qualified minor candiates from 2000 and 2004, in addition to the major candidates vying for the Democratic and Republican nominations in 2000 and 2004.
** [[Electotest:Election:Mock U.S. Presidential Election, combined 2000 and 2004 (editable)|Editable version]]
<!-- Hiding for now
** Different ballot types
*** barscale
*** radioarray
*** singlecheckbox
*** singleradio
*** stars
-->
* [[Electotest:Election:2003 Debian Project Leader]] - comparison of Schulze(wv-mod) and Instant Runoff in calculating the 2003 Debian Project Leader election. (Schulze was used, but the results using Instant Runoff were interesting).
** [[Electotest:Election:2003 Debian Project Leader (editable)|Editable version]]
== Setting up an election ==
If you have access to a running version of (such as [http://wikitest.electorama.com the Electowiki test installation]), setting up an election is reasonably straightforward.
Before getting started, thoguh, there are several important caveats with the current version:
* There is '''no privacy'''. Since everything is stored as a wiki page, that means there's a complete, public audit log of every change, '''including votes'''. Future versions will probably lock this down, but it's not an immediate priority.
* There is '''little security'''. Ballot box stuffing is easy, and I can't guarantee that ballots cast by one person can't be changed by a different person (though some measures have been taken to prevent the latter).
* Performance is pretty bad. No systematic performance work has happened to fix this up just yet.
* It's probably still pretty buggy.
Now that you've been warned, the easiest thing to do is to copy the configuration for [[#Example elections|an example election]], and create a new page in the Election: namespace with your election on it. Since election configurations are just wiki pages, the same editing instructions for editing a wiki apply here, except that the syntax is substantially different.
A somewhat complete reference for the election configuration pages is here:
* [[Electowidget Configuration Reference]]
== MediaWiki administrator information ==
You can install Electowidget as a plugin on a MediaWiki 1.5.1 installation. As October, 2005, it requires a small patch to the base installation to work, however, and probably won't work with earlier versions of MediaWiki, nor will it work with the development version of MediaWiki (due to some refactoring that has happened). It also mostly requires PHP 4. It runs under PHP 5, but there's a known issue or two.
* [http://electorama.com/2005/electowidget/downloads/electowidget-0.1.0.tar.gz Download the tarball to get started]
* [[Electowidget Installation]] - step-by-step installation instructions for Electowiki (assumes you already have [http://mediawiki.org MediaWiki] installed.
== Developer information ==
Electowidget is programmed in PHP. It's currently pretty tightly bound to MediaWiki, but an effort is already underway to generalize it, and make it possible to plug into any PHP application that provides the necessary support infrastructure.
[http://electorama.com/2005/electowidget/classdocs/ Doxygen documentation] is available.
== Screenshots ==
No screenshots yet, but the [[#Example elections|example elections]] are web accessible live demos.
== License ==
Electowidget is licensed under a BSD-style open source license. See LICENSE.txt in the distribution for the exact text of the license.
== Help ==
To either get help, or to offer help, here's a list of community resources:
* [http://bugs.electorama.com Bug tracking]
* [http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/electowidget-discuss-electorama.com Mailing list]
* IRC: irc.freenode.net:6667 #electowidget
{{bsd-licensed}}
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