The Soviet Union and Pre-Invasion II Iraq had voter turnouts of 98+%. If voter turnout were important the same could be done here. What is wanted is a high turnout of INTERESTED voters. Only ballot choices produce that. Nevada has consistently higher voter turnout at all levels than any other state. Nevada also is the only state with No Of The Above (NOTA) as a pre-printed ballot option which must be included in all elections; even the "uncontested" races. I do not think this is a coincidence. Unfortunately the NOTA votes are non-binding as is the case in Australia. With binding NOTA, if NOTA with there is a new race with new candidates; none of whom can have appeared on the ballot where NOTA won. In Nevada, you have the ignominy of being listed as coming in second behind NOTA. But, you still get to exercise the levers of political power. Still, even Nevada's miniscule expansion of ballot options demonstrated my point. Interesting ballots (more candidates or more options) draw more voters because the pool of interested voters is larger. Another simple option I would like to see is a star next to the current office holder. This would slightly offset the staggering advantages of incumbency. After binding NOTA and incumbency identification, then you can begin to work on the rigged ballot access game create by the Democrat/Republican hegemony. -----Original Message----- From: Neil Johnson [mailto:njohnsn@njohnsn.com] Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 9:18 PM To: Major Variola (ret); cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: Chaumian blinding & public voting? On Friday 31 October 2003 12:10 pm, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

Is is possible to use blinding (or other protocols) so that all votes are published, you can check that your vote is in there, and you (or anyone) can run the maths and verify the vote? Without being able to link people to votes without their consent.

Doing this would allow vote buyers to verify a voter voted the way they wanted. That is one of the main reasons you can't take a copy of your paper ballot home with you now. One option might be to give the voter a MAC of their ballot and then print the MAC's in the paper. The voter could check to see if their vote had been altered. I still think far better methods for improving voter turn out other than Internet voting are: 1. A National Election Holiday (but in the middle of the work week so people can't use it to extend a vacation). 2. Couple the Election with a National Lottery with local, state, and national prizes. With appropriate delink of voter's identity from the way they voted of course. (I'm not claiming that this would actually improve things overall, just increase voter turnout). -- Neil Johnson http://www.njohnsn.com PGP key available on request.