[cc'd to cryptography (where clues reside...), and to cypherpunks (yeah, I know, don't feed the animals :-))] At 8:32 PM -0800 12/1/03, Donald L. Luskin wrote:

I see that Krugman's column today is about Diebold and his voting machines. I recall that this discussion group had a thread going about that several weeks ago that seemed quite involved, but I never read it. Would someone be so kind as to remind me what that was all about? Thanks!

Coming from someone whose primary interest is (still?...) financial cryptography these days, and internet bearer financial cryptography in particular, the answer here is a simple -- if you will -- paradox: ---> You cannot have a perfectly secret electronic vote unless everybody can sell their votes. <--- The most anonymous protocols for electronic voting are the same protocols that were invented for electronic bearer transactions like anonymous digital cash, bearer bonds/stock, etc. You're given a unique, anonymous, blinded, non-forgeable glop of bits, which you produce in exchange for a single operation of the voting protocol at the time of your vote. The problem is, you can sell said glop of bits -- for, say, another glop of bits representing a requisite amount of cash in the fiat, or commodity-backed, currency of your choice. Thus, more important, and to turn the above paradox on its head, the *only* way you can prevent the sale of that glop of bits is with some form of direct observation of the voter, complete with is-a-person identity schemes and/or other forms of virtual state-sponsored proctology. As an anarchocapitalist, of course, selling votes is fine by me. Monopolies on force are evil anyway, so selling my franchise for a mess o' pottage doesn't carry nearly the moral suasion that it used to. Moore's law and the internet can't price force-monopoly out of business fast enough, if you ask me. But, for your average demopublican (okay, I vote congenitally Republican, somebody stop me, I know it only encourages them -- but then again I go to church, too, silly atavist me...) selling votes is the highest sacrilege against the State there is. Something on the order of eating the wafer before the wine, or vice-versa, or whatever. For anarchocapitalists, selling your vote (aka equity), is something you're *supposed* to be able to do, something you're *honor-bound* to do, borrowing "votes", if necessary, and selling them *short*... Cheers, RAH Whose last Financial Cryptography conference, in the Caymans in 2001, was spent pointing out that the previous "stolen" election was not a *financial* problem, 4 hours of the best and brightest's vociferous disputation through lunch to the contrary. "Camels, fleas, and princes exist everywhere." -- Persian proverb "The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations." -- David Friedman, _The_Machinery_of_Freedom_ "No matter who you vote for, the government gets elected." --Lizard, fronting an old chestnut, he says "When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'