[ale] Re: Vote Today - Secret Ballots

[Joseph A Knapka]

Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> 11/5/2002 1:32:19 PM, Joseph A Knapka <jknapka at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Not necessarily. In "Applied Cryptography", Bruce Schneier outlines
>>cryptographically secure protocols that prohibit votes from being
>>changed by anyone other than the caster, prohibit ballot-stuffing,
>>ensure that every vote is properly counted exactly once, and possess
>>a number of other useful properties. With such an implementation,
>>it would be impossible for even the programmer who writes the
>>code to alter election results, since any voter can execute
>>a cryptographic challenge against the results to ensure that
>>their vote is correctly counted, and no one without an unreasonably
>>huge amount of computing power would be able to alter the results
>>without being detected.
>>
>>If we're gonna use electronic voting, we ought to do it right.
>>
>>-- Joe
> 
> 
> The problem with these techniques is that they don't guarantee anonymity of the vote/voter.

Sure they do. A secure voting protocol can allow a voter
to produce "proof" that he voted any way at all - that is,
if someone tries to coerce a voter into demonstrating that
they voted for some "approved" candidate, the protocol can
be designed in such a way that the voter can produce
that proof no matter how she actually voted.

The *real* problem with existing secure voting schemes is that
they're rather computationally expensive, and they require
cryptographically-strong random IDs to be generated for
every voter. But neither of those problems is insurmountable.

Cheers,

-- Joe

> This 
> doesn't sound true at first until you revise your presumption of what a true secret ballot is. This 
> restriction is particularly difficult to overcome because its not enough to hide the actual vote from 
> people other than the voter - one cannot provide proof of the vote to the voter hisself - a feature oft 
> requested by people unaware of the consequences! The reason for this restriction, and why giving 
> the voter something he/she can take proving his vote is that such proof provides the tools for 
> coercion. Before the guarantee of the secret ballot - it was very common for trade unions to post 
> "poll watchers" to ensure their membership voted the "right way". The great thing about paper 
> ballots with lock boxes is that they assured a secret ballot, where the voter could be confident his 
> vote was private yet counted, and independent observers could physically verify that the vote was 
> correctly counted. Introducing fraud in that environment required a lot of cooperation and was 
> relatively easy to detect. Electronic voting, and the current system in place in Georgia, fails 
> miserably in this regard and I believe them to be UnConstitutional. I think the optical reader ballot 
> where the voter fills in the little oval was an excellent compromise that afforded these same 
> protections as the paper ballot and is certainly cheaper and less complex than what we have now.
> 
> 	best regards,
> 
> 		Ben Scherrey
> 
> .. who votes Libertarian at every opportunity and wrote in NOTA for every non-contested race.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 




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