On the outright laughability of internet "democracy"

[A.Melon]

On Sun, 11 Aug 2002 13:22:15 -0400, you wrote:
>
> At 4:35 PM +0200 on 8/11/02, Anonymous wrote:
>
>
> > Next, the "internet" boogeyman.
>
> Nope. Just the clueless "only knows one austrian remailer" boogeyman. Watch
> me make him go away:
>
> <*Plonk!*>

Based on your inability or unwillingness to address the issues identified specifically, that is 
pretty good course of action on your part.

I would think you might be interested in going deeper, as "Blind signatures for untraceable 
payments" is directly applicable to both digital settlement and digital voting. See 
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds2-4/voting.html for an interesting little article of 
introduction about the topic. And there are many others more current and deep.

Those issues, remaining unaddressed by you, include:

"The "sold vote" boogeyman".

You need to submit evidence that "anonymous" "internet" voting is more likely to be fraudulent 
than paper, voter-present by mail voting. You have submitted none, and the "cryptography" word is 
insufficient to scare me off.

The "bogus digital voter registration" boogeyman.

You may also wish to show how digital voter registration cards would be more likely to be bogus 
than "Motor Voter, no-id required" registration cards. Good luck.

The "crypto" boogeyman.

I challenge you to show that current, published crypto voting protocols cannot accomplish the 
following:
1. one digital sig, one vote, the first one, and the others are discarded
2. no dig signature, no vote
3. no dig voter registration, no dig sig
4. anonymity, i.e., no connectibility between the voter's choice and his identity.
5. auditability, i.e., connection between each voting "lever throw" and a dig sig for the current 
vote.

Next, the "internet" boogeyman.

It's just a pipe/wire/whatever. Bits. Don't be afraid. If the bits are properly signed, no problem 
and whether "internet" bits or voter-machine-punched-paper-tape-bits is irrelevant."

They are not strengthened or weakened by the mail server applied to their transmission, by the way.

Cheers!