[Mailman-Developers] Mailman/eVote collaboration

[Marilyn Davis]

Hello Mailman developers,

I don't get to work on the port to Mailman as much as I'd like to
because I'm preparing to teach my first Python course in January!
What a brilliant language!

But, I do have it all working together now, and very nicely.

A complicated part was coordinating the nomail feature with eVote.
eVote has a "vacation" feature that puts the ballot on hold while the
name is taken off the majordomo list.  While on vacation, votes are
not accepted because that would break the security that eVote's vote
receipt gives.  To come back from vacation, when using the eVote
feature, you have to send a random-keyed confirmation message.

But, with mailman, I'm disabling eVote's vacation feature and telling
users to set 'nomail'.  And when 'nomail' is set, this info is
communicated to eVote, via a hack, so that votes aren't accepted.

eVote sends a message acknowledging this change in status, which is
redundant with mailman's acknowledgment. eVote also sends the
acknowledgment to the list's owner, so that the owner is aware of who
is voting and who is not.  So there's some duplication of
acknowledgments there.  I could stop it but I'd rather stop the
mailman acknowledgment because it happens when only half the job is
done, the mailman half.  So, I'll just leave both acknowledgments --
unless someone talks me into another point of view.

Mostly, this is just a status report, unless someone has a thought.

Next, I have to fix up an installation script and release the bundle.

Marilyn Davis