[ale] Re: Vote Today - Secret Ballots

[Benjamin Scherrey]

11/5/2002 1:32:19 PM, Joseph A Knapka <jknapka at earthlink.net> wrote:

>
>Not necessarily. In "Applied Cryptography", Bruce Schneier outlines
>cryptographically secure protocols that prohibit votes from being
>changed by anyone other than the caster, prohibit ballot-stuffing,
>ensure that every vote is properly counted exactly once, and possess
>a number of other useful properties. With such an implementation,
>it would be impossible for even the programmer who writes the
>code to alter election results, since any voter can execute
>a cryptographic challenge against the results to ensure that
>their vote is correctly counted, and no one without an unreasonably
>huge amount of computing power would be able to alter the results
>without being detected.
>
>If we're gonna use electronic voting, we ought to do it right.
>
>-- Joe

The problem with these techniques is that they don't guarantee anonymity of the vote/voter. This 
doesn't sound true at first until you revise your presumption of what a true secret ballot is. This 
restriction is particularly difficult to overcome because its not enough to hide the actual vote from 
people other than the voter - one cannot provide proof of the vote to the voter hisself - a feature oft 
requested by people unaware of the consequences! The reason for this restriction, and why giving 
the voter something he/she can take proving his vote is that such proof provides the tools for 
coercion. Before the guarantee of the secret ballot - it was very common for trade unions to post 
"poll watchers" to ensure their membership voted the "right way". The great thing about paper 
ballots with lock boxes is that they assured a secret ballot, where the voter could be confident his 
vote was private yet counted, and independent observers could physically verify that the vote was 
correctly counted. Introducing fraud in that environment required a lot of cooperation and was 
relatively easy to detect. Electronic voting, and the current system in place in Georgia, fails 
miserably in this regard and I believe them to be UnConstitutional. I think the optical reader ballot 
where the voter fills in the little oval was an excellent compromise that afforded these same 
protections as the paper ballot and is certainly cheaper and less complex than what we have now.

	best regards,

		Ben Scherrey

.. who votes Libertarian at every opportunity and wrote in NOTA for every non-contested race.





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