e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 01:04 PM 11/24/03 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote:
>Thats not how it works. The idea is that you make your choices on
>the machine, and when you lock them in, two things happen: They
>are electronically recorded in the device for the normal count, and
>also, a paper receipt is printed. The voter checks the receipt to
>see if it accurately records his choices, and then is required to
>put it in a ballot box retained at the polling site.
>
>If there's a need for a recount, the paper receipts can be checked.
>
>I imagine a well designed system might show the paper receipt through
>a window, but not let it be handled, to prevent serial fraud.

Vinny the Votebuyer pays you if you send a picture of your
face adjacent to the committed receipt, even if you can't touch it.
Since the voting booth is private, no one can see you do this,
even if it were made illegal.  (And since phones can store images,
jamming the transmission at the booth doesn't work.)

You send your picture from the cellphone that took it, along with a
paypal
account number as a text message.

Vinny knows the vote is committed at that point.  Vinnie can bin diff
compare
pix to assure non-duplicates, hires someone (probably offshore :-)
to verify its not a quick and dirty photoshop job, and that its a vote
for the
"right" candidate.  Further resisting photoshop, Vinny accepts pictures
only during voting hours.

Vinny has some kind of front business which could be expected to pay
lots of people in
bursts --a political polling service that reimburses interviewees would
be ideal.

On a small scale (coerce your voting age household members) its
untraceable.
On a medium scale (free drinks if you can show you voted for Caesar) its
easy too.
On a larger scale you might need confidentiality for the image and
traffic analysis resistance.
Maybe anon cash.

Fundamentally, its just like the analog hole for DRM ---you can't show a
human a commit
message without the human being able to reproduce it for others.

The booths could cycle through fake commit messages for all possible
candidates,
so that you could take a picture of yourself with a bogus commit
message, vote
as you will, and still collect.   That might be confusing but is a
counter.

NB: Collect = avoid retribution.