CDR: Re: A secure voting protocol

[Jim Burnes]

On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Tim May wrote:
> At 2:46 PM -0800 11/10/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:

> Physical ballot voting has its problems, but at least people
> _understand_ the concept of marking a ballot, as opposed to "blinding
> the exponent of their elliptic curve function and then solving the
> discrete log problem for an n-out-of-m multi-round tournament."
>
...

> It won't happen in our lifetimes. It may happen in European nations,
> but only because the average citizen does what he is told to do more
> so than American paranoids and individualists will do.
>
> --Tim May

Agreed.  

I envision a day (background music swelling and eyes tearing slightly --
an obvious Oscar moment) when it matters little who the President-elect is, 
because DC is bound and emasculated by its original constitutional chains.
The day when the Pres has little more power than the Queen Mother.

(Of course the Clinton Administration's idea of a Queen Mother might
mean something altogether different ;-)  (tim: is a smiley face
acceptable as a meta-closing paren?)

That should be an easier problem to solve than getting people to accept
the validity of exotic crypto voting protocols.

jim
-- 
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of
himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we
found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this
question.	-- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural