Chaumian blinding & public voting?

[John Washburn]

The Soviet Union and Pre-Invasion II Iraq had voter turnouts of 98+%.
If voter turnout were important the same could be done here.

What is wanted is a high turnout of INTERESTED voters.  Only ballot
choices produce that.  Nevada has consistently higher voter turnout at
all levels than any other state.  Nevada also is the only state with No
Of The Above (NOTA) as a pre-printed ballot option which must be
included in all elections; even the "uncontested" races. I do not think
this is a coincidence.

Unfortunately the NOTA votes are non-binding as is the case in
Australia.  With binding NOTA, if NOTA with there is a new race with new
candidates; none of whom can have appeared on the ballot where NOTA won.
In Nevada, you have the ignominy of being listed as coming in second
behind NOTA.  But, you still get to exercise the levers of political
power.

Still, even Nevada's miniscule expansion of ballot options demonstrated
my point.  Interesting ballots (more candidates or more options) draw
more voters because the pool of interested voters is larger.

Another simple option I would like to see is a star next to the current
office holder. This would slightly offset the staggering advantages of
incumbency. 

After binding NOTA and incumbency identification, then you can begin to
work on the rigged ballot access game create by the Democrat/Republican
hegemony.

-----Original Message-----
From: Neil Johnson [mailto:njohnsn at njohnsn.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 9:18 PM
To: Major Variola (ret); cypherpunks at lne.com
Subject: Re: Chaumian blinding & public voting?

On Friday 31 October 2003 12:10 pm, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> Is is possible to use blinding (or other protocols) so that all votes
> are published, you can check that your vote is in there, and you
> (or anyone) can run the maths and verify the vote?   Without being
> able to link people to votes without their consent.
>

Doing this would allow vote buyers to verify a voter voted the way  they

wanted.

That is one of the main reasons you can't take a copy of your paper
ballot 
home with you now.

One option might be to give the voter a MAC of their ballot and then
print the 
MAC's in the paper. The voter could check to see if their vote had been 
altered.

I still think far better methods for improving voter turn out other than

Internet voting are:

1.  A National Election Holiday (but in the middle of the work week so
people 
can't use it to extend a vacation).

2. Couple the Election with a National Lottery with local, state, and
national 
prizes. With appropriate delink of voter's identity from the way they
voted 
of course.

(I'm not claiming that this would actually improve things overall, just 
increase voter turnout).





-- 
Neil Johnson
http://www.njohnsn.com
PGP key available on request.