Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 11:43:57 -0700 From: Ed Gerck <egerck@nma.com> Subject: Re: voting
David Jablon wrote:
I think Ed's criticism is off-target. Where is the "privacy problem" with Chaum receipts when Ed and others still have the freedom to refuse theirs or throw them away?
The privacy, coercion, intimidation, vote selling and election integrity problems begin with giving away a receipt that is linkable to a ballot.
It is not relevant to the security problem whether a voter may destroy his receipt, so that some receipts may disappear. What is relevant is that voters may HAVE to keep their receipt or... suffer retaliation... not get paid... lose their jobs... not get a promotion... etc. Also relevant is that voters may WANT to keep their receipts, for the same reasons.
I think all this concern about voter coercion is rather overblown. Maybe we should ban bank statements because people might be coerced into showing them to someone and punished for hiding their money. Receipts might open up opportunities for voter coercion but there are mechanisms for combatting coercion other than coercive anonymity. What is missing in this discussion is mention of the benefits which would flow from making voter anonymity optional. Non-anonymous voting is a necessary precondition for a vote market. As I'm sure everyone on this list appreciates, markets work better than elections, and indeed, under a vote market system the negative externalities imposed on other markets by the electoral process would be mitigated. This is because unlike under the current system, under the vote market system the outcome would often be certain well in advance, greatly reducing the impact of political risk on markets. The vote market system would also offer a means for mitigating political risk via transparent market processes rather than the through the current rather slezy practises. There would be social dividends too. The people most likely to sell their vote would be poor people who would benefit from a new and regular source of income. The existence of a vote market would encourage these people, who often feel disenfranchised, to participate in the electoral system, albeit in a venal way. It would also help increase the average intelligence of the vote, because rich people and corporations are generally smarter than poor people. I commend the vote market to the list. cheers, Tim
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I have one word for all of you. Equity. :-). I expect that someday we'll vote shares for the application of non-monopolistic force just like we now "vote" for the application of monopolist force. I think statists -- including most cryptographers who should know better -- are looking this "problem" of the mutual exclusivity of "accountability" versus anonymity in electronic voting and they just don't understand what they're looking at yet. Maybe they never will. I think we're looking at something as fundamental as Coase's theorem, here, or at least Dan Geer's observation that the boundry between symmetric and asymmetric as identical to the boundry between the firm and the outside world. We're looking at the definition of crypto-anarchy here, folks. Anarcho-capitalism made real. Cheers, RAH Who still thinks that financial cryptography is the only cryptography that matters. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQIBv58PxH8jf3ohaEQJs5wCeMmLO1cuXZvhg9XAt39iFy6roLsQAnRrO GG8Yyr5ORZSP4T/D3S5mQtT1 =+4JY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- 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'
participants (2)
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R. A. Hettinga -
Tim Benham