At least in California, this part is impossible to accomplish:
"And so long as the counties can protect their secret keys..."
An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
21–30 of 62 posts
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
This idea encrypts your ballot with your voter ID + some secret key that you know and creates encrypted data E. It, then, publishes a (E, your ballot) pair. Since only you can decrypt E, others won't know how you vote.
A third party can now pressure you to produce your secrets to verify who you voted for. This is not possible in the current system: as long as the final tally reports at least 1 vote for the person you claim to have voted for, no one can prove your claim wrong. "$5 off your next purchase if you can produce a receipt for candidate X!" "You must vote for X if you wish to join my organization."
But doesn't this protocol make it impossible to prove what your secret key is? i.e. there are multiple (user-derivable) keys that look valid, as in deniable encryption?
(And I'm sure everyone's in agreement with the importance of making the ballot secret.)
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#23A key part of the America system of voting is that we use a "secret" ballot. This important to prevent vote buying and voter intimidation. I like the rest of the proposal.
Right, if you throw out the requirement of secrecy, it's pretty easy to produce a verifiable system. That's the whole problem to begin with.
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#24A key part of the America system of voting is that we use a "secret" ballot. This important to prevent vote buying and voter intimidation. I like the rest of the proposal.
There's a lot of academic work in this area, some of it going back 20 years. The keyword to look for when searching for papers is "receipt-free" voting.
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#25A key part of the America system of voting is that we use a "secret" ballot. This important to prevent vote buying and voter intimidation. I like the rest of the proposal.
Perhaps this could be combined with a zero-knowledge proof? From wikipedia[1] with context: zero-knowledge protocol is a method by which one party (the voting machine) can prove to another party (the voter) that a given statement is true (their ballot was cast, untampered), without conveying any information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true. ... the definition implies that the voter will not be ab…
We know how to make a simple, verifiable, understandable voting system: paper ballot, maybe with an electronic counter.
You can explain in about 30 seconds that the ballots shouldn't be individually identifiable, you have a record that is difficult to tamper with, etc.
How many people have a rigorous understanding of Zero Knowledge proofs? How many people would be able to audit the implementation of such a system?
The benefits that come from electronic voting are small, and we can get them in other ways. Why are people so eager to add so much complexity to such an important civic function?
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#26A key part of the America system of voting is that we use a "secret" ballot. This important to prevent vote buying and voter intimidation. I like the rest of the proposal.
Right, it's important that no one else would be able to know how you voted. Perhaps the election commission would also have a paper receipt with a different unique key. Then both your receipt and the county's receipt would be necessary to locate your vote on the blockchain. Then vote verification could be restricted to the same level of privacy as when voting takes place.
How does this solve the problem? Previously, if I wanted to verify someone else's vote, I would need their SSN and Voter ID. Now I also need the county's receipt.
If someone would so readily hand over their SSN and Voter ID, what will stop them from handing over the county receipt?
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps this could be combined with a zero-knowledge proof? From wikipedia[1] with context: zero-knowledge protocol is a method by which one party (the voting machine) can prove to another party (the voter) that a given statement is true (their ballot was cast, untampered), without conveying any information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true. ... the definition implies that the voter will not be ab…
We know how to make a simple, verifiable, understandable voting system: paper ballot, maybe with an electronic counter. You can explain in about 30 seconds that the ballots shouldn't be individually identifiable, you have a record that is difficult to tamper with, etc. How many people have a rigorous understanding of Zero Knowledge proofs? How many people would be able to audit the implementation of such a system? Th…
I live in Colorado, where we recently (a few cycles ago) introduced nearly 100% mail-in voting. In my opinion, we should move the whole country to this system; participation will likely go up, lines for folks who show up on election day are manageable and there is significantly less human error when you don't have to rush it all in one day.
I agree that a blockchain solution may be overly complex, but I think the spirit of what they're after is in the right place.
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#28There should be a zeroth rule that an voting system intended to be used for government which would be that the average person is able to audit / understand the system. This was in an ACM magazine article.
Indeed. Pencil & paper, with multi-party oversight, and long nights of counting.
Number of ways are developed to circumvent that in countries where police and court are not strong enough:
* bribing of voters to bring their empty ballot to briber;
* fake voters (commission is not police, they are not checking documents as carefully as police do);
* bribing of counters for direct replacement of votes;
* pens with ink which is easy to remove and correct;
etc.
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#29If want to know why Internet Voting won't work, you should watch Alex J. Halderman's talk at the 31c3 conference about internet voting in Estonia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os
Re: An idea for encrypted, verifiable voting
#30The main problem with digitally signing/encrypting a vote is that the public key must be known, which means that someone's vote cannot be anonymous.
I like the idea of a county/precinct/district being the entity who signs the results of a vote. This would protect the anonymity of individual voters, since results are reported on a per county basis today anyways. And if a county is suspected of voter fraud, you could always add their public key to a blacklist..