[ale] Re: Vote Today - Secret Ballots

[Benjamin Scherrey]

11/5/2002 5:59:04 PM, Joseph A Knapka <jknapka at earthlink.net> wrote:

>Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
>> The problem with these techniques is that they don't guarantee anonymity of the vote/voter.
>
>Sure they do. A secure voting protocol can allow a voter
>to produce "proof" that he voted any way at all - that is,
>if someone tries to coerce a voter into demonstrating that
>they voted for some "approved" candidate, the protocol can
>be designed in such a way that the voter can produce
>that proof no matter how she actually voted.

	I need to review my "Applied Cryptography" then as I failed to see this. Everything I read 
protected identity but always provided a way for the initiator to retrieve his vote in an irrefutable 
manner. This does not serve our purposes! :-) I'd be interested in seeing any such proposal for a 
protocol that clears this up.

>The *real* problem with existing secure voting schemes is that
>they're rather computationally expensive, and they require
>cryptographically-strong random IDs to be generated for
>every voter. But neither of those problems is insurmountable.

	Computationally expensive but well within reasonable limits. The IDs need not be 
permanent I don't think and could be generated at the precincts for that specific election.

	thanx & later,

		Ben Scherrey




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