Chaumian blinding & public voting?
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. Currently voting is trusted because political adversaries supervise the process. Previously the mechanics were, well, mechanical, ie, open for inspection. The current genre of voting machines.. well, you know the scam. And still reliant on a few adversarial human monitors. Something like this: The day after elections a list of hex codes -votes- are published. You can find in that list the code that you received (on paper) when you voted, to verify that your vote counted. You can run an algorithm on any subset of codes, including just your own, and learn which candidate that code corresponds to. Everyone can run on the entire dataset, verifying the tally. You don't have to divulge which code is yours if you want it to remain secret. Perhaps the code could contain not only the intended vote, but a unique voter ID so that hexcodes could not be added to the dataset (cf dead people not allowed to vote except in Chicago) without setting off alarms. Perhaps anyone could verify that someone voted, or not, but could not figure who they voted for without their cooperation. Apologies if I should know this, I haven't gotten my head around all the M of N, blinding, database translucency, etc protocols.
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.
On Friday, October 31, 2003, at 07:17 PM, Neil Johnson wrote:
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).
Increasing voter turnout is, of course, a Bad Thing. For the reasons we discuss so often. Mandating a National Election Holiday is, of course, statist and unconstitutional. If Employer Alice negotiates with Employee Bob that he work on a particular day, he works on that particular day. Government cannot interfere. (Or if they try to, those involved have earned a loaded 747 flown into their building.) And, practically, elections come at various times during the year in different states, with sometimes several elections in a year. Can't have a "mandated holiday" for each, right? Further, even on mandated holidays, _some_ people must work just to keep the machinery going. Examples are legion, from cops to oil refinery workers to election place employees. What, are these people especially disenfranchised by having to work while employees of Intel and Apple are told the State has decreed they get to skip work? (Won't even work for Intel, as the wafer fabs run 24/7 and _cannot_ be shut down....don't know about Apple's situation.) When the fuck will people stop proposing statist solutions? Or should we just add 20 of the remaining 30 list subscribers here to the list of 25 million in these united states who need to be sent up the chimneys? Works for me. --Tim May
On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Tim May wrote:
Or should we just add 20 of the remaining 30 list subscribers here to the list of 25 million in these united states who need to be sent up the chimneys? Works for me.
Do we actually have 30 subscribers left? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org "Every living thing dies alone." Donnie Darko
On Friday, October 31, 2003, at 09:17 PM, J.A. Terranson wrote:
On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Tim May wrote:
Or should we just add 20 of the remaining 30 list subscribers here to the list of 25 million in these united states who need to be sent up the chimneys? Works for me.
Do we actually have 30 subscribers left?
Well, we have 13 slightly active posters, plus 10 cluesless lurkers, and 7 HomeSec and CIA and B'Nai Brith Anti-Hate League spies. So, yeah, it adds up to about 30. Between the incipient statism so many of them express and the laughable subscriber base, it just confirms to me that the cause is lost. I hope Al Qaida at least manages to destroy Washington and New York and their statists and animalistic welfare breeders. Thirty million "people of color," as they prefer to be called these days, need to be sent up the chimneys. (For their crimes, their collection of welfare and other benefits, not for their skin color, per se. That so many of the "niggaz" and "Aztlanos" are criminal is not something I concern myself about...our only concern should be to exterminate those who have stolen from us. --Tim May ""Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." --Patrick Henry
On Friday 31 October 2003 10:55 pm, Tim May wrote: ... (Standard Tim May "Anyone who doesn't agree with me deserves to die a horrible death rant) ...
--Tim May
I figured that was coming. Chuckle. -- Neil Johnson http://www.njohnsn.com PGP key available on request.
On Fri, 2003-10-31 at 23:55, Tim May wrote:
Increasing voter turnout is, of course, a Bad Thing. For the reasons we discuss so often.
Agreed. To the extent that I want a government at all, I support a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Legions of bleary-eyed, TV-addled, bigoted jackasses are not needed for determining the will of the people. For that matter, I'd just as soon go a few steps closer to the US's original franchise: leaving out the sex- and race-based qualifications, you have to be an established citizen with some assets. This method of setting the franchise would curb the excesses of the bread and circuses crowd, and it would have the added benefit of pissing off the activists and the populists. ...
the list of 25 million in these united states who need to be sent up the chimneys?
Only 25 million? Gotta disagree with you there, Tim. I'm with Sturgeon on this: 90% of everything is crud. The correct statement is, 25 million should be spared.
Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Currently voting is trusted because political adversaries supervise the process. Previously the mechanics were, well, mechanical, ie, open for inspection.
That really is worth saying more often. If we here can't agree on how to make machine voting both robust and private, then EVEN IF A PERFECT SYSTEM COULD BE DESIGNED it is extremely unlikely that a large number of people could be persuaded that it /was/ perfect. So if public confidence in the mechanisms of voting is considered desirable, no electronic or digital system is viable.
You can run an algorithm on any subset of codes, including just your own, [...]
you already lost 94% of the electorate. They are saying "huh?" and going back to whatever they were doing before the election rudely interrupted them. Current electoral systems work - where they do - because the officials keep their hands above the table, and because members of opposing political parties co-operate in snooping on each other, because it is in their interest to do so. This adversarial system not only works (sort of, most of the time, in jurisdictions where the local law enforcement isn't entirely in the hands of one sector of society) but it can be made to appear to work (well enough to satisfy that minority of voters who seem to care) And leaving aside the ritual invokation of gas ovens and 747s, this nasty socialist agrees with the burden of Tim's rant - if people don't want to vote what business is it of government to force them to vote? If someone doesn't want to vote, that's their choice, and a tiny increment to the tiny portion of influence possessed by those of us who do vote. So no skin of our noses. If all of you zombies give up voting than the rest of us get to choose the government, for what its worth. As for lotteries - you want to encourage stupid people to vote? Public holidays for voting are as bad - they are likely to lead fewer people to vote of course - just as in every other public holiday those who get off work will head for the hills or the beaches or the bars or the sports stadiums (and why not if they want to?) and those who have to work anyway will be even busier than normal. It is enough if registration is simple and open, if there are sanctions against employers/landlords/unions/political parties/thugs in general preventing people voting, and if there is a postal vote scheme for people who really can't make it on the day. Most countries don't even have all that yet (big chunks of the USA didn't not that long ago), why complicate things unnecessarily? Ken Brown (resident evil lefty)
On Monday, November 3, 2003, at 02:44 AM, ken wrote:
Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Currently voting is trusted because political adversaries supervise the process. Previously the mechanics were, well, mechanical, ie, open for inspection.
That really is worth saying more often.
If we here can't agree on how to make machine voting both robust and private, then EVEN IF A PERFECT SYSTEM COULD BE DESIGNED it is extremely unlikely that a large number of people could be persuaded that it /was/ perfect.
There are already people who are confused by, and in some cases afraid of, computer touch screen voting. Some of these people are the ones who refuse to use automated teller machines and insist on deal with real bank tellers. Some of them think the government is watching. Some of them are just weird. Trying to educate these people about Chaumian blinding is pointless. (And don't count on the younger generation...they are often less-educated than their parents and grandparents, and in the ghettoes, than their 60-year-old great grandparents.) I can see the PR campaign on WWF wrestling: "Using a combination of Diffie-Hellman and holographic mark inspection, Alice is assured that Vinnie the Votebuyer cannot interfere, by means of a standard ANDO protocol..." Those who propose sophisticated voting systems are sentenced to reread Clarke's "Superiority." --Tim May "Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." --Robert A. Heinlein
On Monday, November 3, 2003, at 02:44 AM, ken wrote:
If we here can't agree on how to make machine voting both robust and private, then EVEN IF A PERFECT SYSTEM COULD BE DESIGNED it is extremely unlikely that a large number of people could be persuaded that it /was/ perfect.
So if public confidence in the mechanisms of voting is considered desirable, no electronic or digital system is viable.
You can run an algorithm on any subset of codes, including just your own, [...]
you already lost 94% of the electorate. They are saying "huh?" and going back to whatever they were doing before the election rudely interrupted them.
I should have mentioned in my last response that there have already been cases where the "electronic vote results" were accidentally posted before the election polls had closed. This did wonders for belief in the system. One of the reported cases was somewhat understandable, not that this affected overall suspicion of the system: some or most of the absentee ballots had already been counted and recorded into the electronic system. They were of course not supposed to be agglomerated with the other electronic vote totals until after the polls closed. Someone made a typical computer error and the partial totals were released ahead of the polls closing. Apparently some number of voters planning to vote thought the election was over and didn't vote. Now with conventional, slow, paper-based systems of the sort we mostly still use in the U.S., there are various "ontological safeguards," or "speed bumps," which make this kind of "computer error" less of an issue. Any computerized system is likely to have glitches like the above, each of which will cause some fraction of the electorate to think things are rigged. As they probably will be. (By the way, there are some possible crypto fixes, such as "timed-release crypto." A beacon could broadcast an unlocking key at some time well after the polls had closed, simultaneously unlocking the many sealed ballot messages. Of course, Joe Sixpack will not understand or trust this kind of complexity, either.) SSL works because it is transparent (hidden from) to the user. Likewise, the crypto used in lottery tickets (e.g., the Scientific Games model) is transparent to the user and he doesn't have to pore over crypto explanations before buying a ticket. (I bought _one_ lottery ticket, for $1, just to see how the numbers were done. Lotteries are of course a tax on the gullible and stupid.) I see less chance that a crypto-based electronic voting system will be adopted in the U.S. than that Robin Hanson's and John Poindexter's "let CIA gamble on who gets assassinated" betting pool will rise from the dead. --Tim May
participants (6)
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J.A. Terranson -
ken -
Major Variola (ret) -
Neil Johnson -
Steve Furlong -
Tim May