Reflect on saving passwords in plain-text

[linusgke]

Under normal conditions, saving passwords in plain-text is an absolute no-go — end of discussion.
However, the following circumstances make it reasonable to save the student's passwords in plain text for this project:

• A user's password is server-generated on user creation and cannot be changed by the user
  (Disclosure of private passwords is hence impossible.)
• Students lose their passwords all the time. Hashed passwords would require re-generating of passwords which is a bit more complex to implement
• There isn't much at stake! — worst case would be someone voting for someone else, which would be easily discovered