I don't know...I've been following some of the voting discussion, and to some extent for the rank-and-file, doesn't this still boil down to "trust us"? (In other words, it looks like a large number of people have to work very carefully to make sure the voting system is secure, and then voters have to trust that the group did the work correctly.) Just riffing here, but isn't there some kind of possility for "Blacknet" voting? In other words, if the "voting machines" were by nature untamperable because of... 1) No one actually knows where they are 2) "They" aren't actually anywhere, perhaps being distributed entities on the network. In fact, votes pass into the voting blacknet and are untraceable. 3) The voting blacknet can be audited perhaps periodically (modula provisions for denial of service attacks), to make sure there's be no systematic tampering (which theoretically should be impossible anyway). OK, of course there are issues of multiple votes &c...but this seems no more difficult than digital cash. -TD

From: Yeoh Yiu <squid@panix.com> To: Ed Gerck <egerck@nma.com> CC: David Jablon <dpj@theworld.com>, John Kelsey <kelsey.j@ix.netcom.com>, "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>, cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net, cryptography@metzdowd.com, "'privacy.at Anonymous Remailer'" <mixmaster@remailer.privacy.at> Subject: Re: voting Date: 18 Apr 2004 23:12:24 -0400

Ed Gerck <egerck@nma.com> writes:

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David Jablon wrote:

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The 'second law' also takes precedence: ballots are always secret, only vote totals are known and are known only after the election ends.

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What I see in serious voting system research efforts are attempts to build systems that provide both accountability and privacy, with minimal tradeoffs.

There is no tradeoff prossible for voter privacy and ballot secrecy. Take away one of them and the voting process is no longer a valid measure. Serious voting system research efforts do not begin by denying the requirements.

You get totals per nation, per state, per county, per riding, per precinct, per polling stion and maybe per ballot box. So there's a need to design the system to have more voters than ballot boxes to conform to your second law.

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