CDR: Re: A secure voting protocol

[petro]

>     --
>At 03:11 PM 11/10/2000 -0800, Tim May 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."
>
>Ideally, we should organize an election so that the illiterate, the 
>stupid, and the drunk will generally fail to vote correctly. 
>Unfortunately someone would then issue the handy dandy automatic 
>party vote generator, and hand it out to the illiterate, the stupid, 
>and the drunk, adding a bottle of cheap wine when handing it out to 
>the drunk.

	The easiest way to do this would be to have the ballot books 
only contain numbers, and the sample ballots mailed to each 
(allegedly) registered voter provide the mapping from name/issue to 
number.


	Then have a *lot* more numbers on the ballot & ballot 
booklets than in the sample ballots. x+1 punches in the wrong hole 
and the entire ballot is discarded.

	No sample ballots available at the polling place.

	This would mean that to vote in a deliberate way (i.e. not 
punching holes at random) you would have to retain your sample ballot.

	Oh--and your sample ballot goes into a shredder by the door.
-- 
A quote from Petro's Archives:
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"Despite almost every experience I've ever had with federal 
authority, I keep imagining its competence."
John Perry Barlow