Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 25, 2003, at 11:21 AM, Trei, Peter wrote:
Tim May [mailto:timcmay@got.net] wrote:
On Nov 25, 2003, at 9:56 AM, Sunder wrote:
Um, last I checked, phone cameras have really shitty resolution, usually less than 320x200. Even so, you'd need MUCH higher resolution, say 3-5Mpixels to be able to read text on a printout in a picture.
Add focus and aiming issues, and this just won't work unless you carry a good camera into the booth with you.
1. Vinnie the Votebuyer knows the _layout_ of the ballot. He only needs to see that the correct box is punched/marked. Or that the screen version has been checked.
I realize you big city types (yes, Tim, Corralitos is big compared to my little burg) have full scale voting booths with curtains (I used the big mechanical machines when I lived in Manhatten), but out here in the sticks, the 'voting booth' is a little standing desk affair with 18 inch privacy shields on 3 sides. If someone tried to take a photo of their ballot in one of those it would be instantly obvious.
All I want is a system which is not more easily screwed around with then paper ballots. Have some imagination - you could, for example, set things up so the voter, and only the voter, can see the screen and/or paper receipt while voting, but still make it impossible to use a camera without being detected.
But how could a restriction on gargoyling oneself be constitutional? If Alice wishes to record her surroundings, including the ballot and/or touchscreen she just voted with, this is her business. (I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.) I wasn't endorsing the practicality of people trying to use digital cameras of any sort in any kind of voting booth, just addressing the claim that cellphone cameras don't have enough resolution. Even 320 x 240 has more than enough resolution to show which boxes have been checked, or to mostly give a usable image with a printed receipt. As for creating tamper-resistant and unforgeable and nonrepudiable voting systems, this is a hard problem. For ontological reasons (who controls machine code, etc.). I start with the canonical model of a very hard to manipulate system: blackballing (voting with black or white stones or balls). Given ontological limits on containers (hard to teleport stones into or out of a container), given ontological limits on number of stones one can hold, and so on (I'll leave it open for readers to ponder the process of blackball voting), this is a fairly robust system. (One can imagine schemes whereby the container is on a scale, showing the weight. This detects double voting for a candidate. One lets each person approach the container, reach into his pocket, and then place one stone into the container (which he of course cannot see into, nor can he remove any stone). If the scale increments by the correct amount, e.g, 3.6 grams, then one is fairly sure no double voting has occurred. And if the voter kept his fist clenched, he as strong assurance that no one else saw whether he was depositing a black stone or a white stone into the container. Then if the stones are counted in front of witnesses, 675 black stones vs. 431 white stones is a fairly robust and trusted outcome. Details would include ensuring that one person voted only once (usual trick: indelible dye on arm when stones issued, witnesses present, etc. Attacks would include the Ruling Party depositing extra stones, etc. And consolidating the distributed results has the usual weaknesses.) Things get much more problematic as soon as this is electronified, computerized, as the normal "ontological" constraints evaporate. Stones can vanish, teleport, be miscounted, suddenly appear, etc. Designing a system which is both robust (all the crypto buzzwords about nonforgeability, satisfaction of is-a-person or one-person constraints, visibility, etc.) and which is also comprehensible to people who are, frankly, unable to correctly punch a paper ballot for Al Gore, is a challenge. I'm not sure either Joe Sixpack in Bakersfield or Irma Yenta in Palm Beach want to spend time learning about "all-or-nothing-disclosure" and "vote commitment protocols." I know about David Chaum's system. He has gotten interested in this problem. I am not interested in this problem. Moreover, I think working on electronic voting only encourages the political process (though implementing wide computer voting and then having more of the "winning totals posted before polls close" exposures of shenanigans might be useful in undermining support for the concept of democracy, which would be a good thing.) I don't say it's not a security problem worth thinking about. It reminds me a lot of the capabilities stuff, including Granovetter diagrams and boundaries. Probably a nice category theory outlook on voting lurking here (e.g., voting as a pushout in an appropriate category, or something whacky like that). Electronic voting of the type being pushed now is going to cause some major loss of faith in the system when some scandals emerge (and when even analyzing the protocols and talking about what one has learned results in a "cyst and decease" order from Diebold and that ilk).
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 03:26:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
(I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.)
What's your take on this situation, then: BOSS: Get in that booth and vote Kennedy or I'll fire you. Take this expensive camera with you so you can't pull any funny business. If it were illegal for me to bring the camera, this would be an unenforceable order. I'll do whatever the hell I want when I get into the booth, thank you very much. Good for me. Good for everybody. He with the most slaves should not automatically win the election. Right Tim?
On Nov 25, 2003, at 5:05 PM, BillyGOTO wrote:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 03:26:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
(I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.)
What's your take on this situation, then:
BOSS: Get in that booth and vote Kennedy or I'll fire you. Take this expensive camera with you so you can't pull any funny business.
I have no problem with this free choice contract. You, in the rest of your comments, show yourself to be one of the many tens of millions who probably need to be sent up the chimneys for their crimes. Liberty's a mental chore, isn't it? --Tim May "You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." - -Michael Shirley
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 07:10:28PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
On Nov 25, 2003, at 5:05 PM, BillyGOTO wrote:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 03:26:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
(I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.)
What's your take on this situation, then:
BOSS: Get in that booth and vote Kennedy or I'll fire you. Take this expensive camera with you so you can't pull any funny business.
I have no problem with this free choice contract.
You can't sell your vote for the same reason that Djinni don't grant wishes for "more wishes".
You, in the rest of your comments, show yourself to be one of the many tens of millions who probably need to be sent up the chimneys for their crimes.
Liberty's a mental chore, isn't it?
Maybe I just don't understand Liberty. I need to meditate on it for a while. I'll use your image of tens of millions of "criminals" going up in smoke (myself included) as a starting point. PS: Is support of vote buying consistent with rejection of Democracy?
On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:10 AM, BillyGOTO wrote:
I have no problem with this free choice contract.
You can't sell your vote for the same reason that Djinni don't grant wishes for "more wishes".
A silly comment. I take it you're saying "Because the rules don't allow it." Or something similar to this. The "rules" are precisely what we are discussing. And "vote buying" is much more widespread than what happens at the lowest level we happen to be talking about here, where Alice is paid $10 to vote for some particular candidate. In fact, vote buying is much more common and more dangerous at the level of political representatives. Appealing to "the rules" (what your Djinni state as the rules) is nonproductive. Payoffs and kickbacks can be declared illegal, but they continue to happen in various ways.
You, in the rest of your comments, show yourself to be one of the many tens of millions who probably need to be sent up the chimneys for their crimes.
Liberty's a mental chore, isn't it?
Maybe I just don't understand Liberty. I need to meditate on it for a while. I'll use your image of tens of millions of "criminals" going up in smoke (myself included) as a starting point.
PS: Is support of vote buying consistent with rejection of Democracy?
Liberty is characterized in the .sig below: ""Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" -- Ben Franklin
On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 09:18:42AM -0800, Tim May wrote:
On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:10 AM, BillyGOTO wrote:
I have no problem with this free choice contract.
You can't sell your vote for the same reason that Djinni don't grant wishes for "more wishes".
A silly comment. I take it you're saying "Because the rules don't allow it." Or something similar to this.
The "rules" are precisely what we are discussing.
In this case, the "rules" are implemented as the design requirements for the ballot box under discussion. A snoop-resistant ballot box can give the "rules" some huevos. If I sell you my Kennedy vote and then go into a Snoop-Proof(tm) box and cast it, you won't really be able to tell if I've ripped you off.
And "vote buying" is much more widespread than what happens at the lowest level we happen to be talking about here, where Alice is paid $10 to vote for some particular candidate. In fact, vote buying is much more common and more dangerous at the level of political representatives.
And their ballots are generally not cast behind moldy blue curtains.
On Wednesday 26 November 2003 11:18 am, Tim May wrote:
Liberty is characterized in the .sig below:
""Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" -- Ben Franklin
And if they are all armed ? They all starve. -- Neil Johnson http://www.njohnsn.com PGP key available on request.
On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Neil Johnson wrote:
""Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" -- Ben Franklin
And if they are all armed ? They all starve.
Lambs can eat grass, which is usually unarmed.
Thomas Shaddack wrote:
On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Neil Johnson wrote:
""Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" -- Ben Franklin
And if they are all armed ? They all starve.
Lambs can eat grass, which is usually unarmed.
It is not. Grass is stuffed full of all sorts of complicated chemicals that can cause confusion to creatures that chomp it. Not to mention nassty little silica crystals. Lambs can eat grass because they are toughened and honed grass-killers, fitted by millions of years of evolution to survive everything the grass can throw at them. And even then they only cope with some kinds of grass. When a cat eats grass it gets sick. It doesn't take much intelligence to sneak up on a leaf, but it takes one hell of a digestive system to eat it. Us mammals are downstream of a 200-million-year evolutionary race between ourselves and green plants - they evolve a new poison, we evolve to tolerate it. Then we put it in hot drinks. Why else do so many plant compounds have such powerful drug effects on animals? At the time of writing there is no winner in sight. It isn't impossible to imagine one side winning in the end though. The plants really did beat the bacteria way back in the Palaeozoic - wood is about the only living tissue that bacteria can't eat. Which is why there is so much coal around. Fungi got the better of them later. Democracy tries to get the majority of participants through to the next round of the game. Natural selection kills nearly everybody, nearly all the time. Which is why it is so effective. But, given the choice, I'll take democracy. Trust me, I'm a botanist.
On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 04:06:43PM +0000, ken wrote:
Thomas Shaddack wrote:
On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Neil Johnson wrote:
""Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" -- Ben Franklin
And if they are all armed ? They all starve.
Lambs can eat grass, which is usually unarmed.
It is not. Grass is stuffed full of all sorts of complicated chemicals that can cause confusion to creatures that chomp it. Not to mention nassty little silica crystals.
Lambs can eat grass because they are toughened and honed grass-killers, fitted by millions of years of evolution to survive everything the grass can throw at them. And even then they only cope with some kinds of grass. When a cat eats grass it gets sick.
Right, in fact if sheep (and sometimes cattle) eat Phalaris sp., for instance, they get the "staggers", depending on the time of year and other environmental conditions, and also upon the alkaloid makeup of the particular cultivar. Phalaris, of course, contains fairly large amounts of tryptamines, like dimethyltriptamine (DMT), as do many other plants. And thank the Goddess for that -- but sheep don't like it. Or maybe they do, and just aren't saying.
participants (6)
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BillyGOTO -
Harmon Seaver -
ken -
Neil Johnson -
Thomas Shaddack -
Tim May