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Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#2
AP article on this: https://www.apnews.com/7e78189c21ce4a7cb7cb73432705c3ca (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844173)

And the Galois post here: https://galois.com/blog/2019/05/protecting-election-integrit... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19840683)

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#4
post #3

>After the election is complete, the tracker codes can be used by voters to confirm that their votes were not altered or tampered with and that they were properly counted. So what's preventing vote-buying schemes?

Zero Knowledge Proofs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#5
post #4
post #3

>After the election is complete, the tracker codes can be used by voters to confirm that their votes were not altered or tampered with and that they were properly counted. So what's preventing vote-buying schemes?

Zero Knowledge Proofs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

What you really want is some way for the voter to create plausible deniability. Like the voter should have multiple secret keys, one which allows them to confirm their vote was correctly tallied for themselves, and another one that allows them to trick an adversary into thinking they voted for an arbitrary candidate.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#7
I don't understand how counting verification is achieved. Let's say that election officials release a list of hashed votes, so that you can verify that your vote has been counted and included into results. But how can you check that all other votes in the list are the votes from real people and not arbitrarily added by sysadmin to get the expected result?

Does anyone know how such things are implemented? I have read about e-voting in Estonia, but there one has to trust the authorities and cannot independently verify the results.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#8
post #6

Electronic voting isn't a solution, it's an attack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

This isn't an electronic voting system.

> ElectionGuard provides a complete implementation of end-to-end verifiable elections. It is designed to work with systems that use paper ballots, supplementing today’s tabulation process by providing a means of public verification of the accuracy of reported results.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#9
post #3

>After the election is complete, the tracker codes can be used by voters to confirm that their votes were not altered or tampered with and that they were properly counted. So what's preventing vote-buying schemes?

In Estonian e-voting they allowed to change the vote later or re-vote offline. So that if someone sold their vote or was forced to vote, they can later change their mind.

But such scheme is still vulnerable: for example, imagine if a large state-owned or having close ties with government company forces their employees to vote online under supervision. If the employees are not very good with computers or don't own one, they cannot change their vote online later, and employer can set their shifts to a voting day so that they cannot visit the polling station.

Re: Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

#10
post #3

>After the election is complete, the tracker codes can be used by voters to confirm that their votes were not altered or tampered with and that they were properly counted. So what's preventing vote-buying schemes?

That's a great point.

If I understand correctly schemer could agree to pay for votes, but had no way to verify the ballot was indeed cast for that candidate. With this system they could first verify the vote before paying. It's made possible by the information which is used to verify the vote. It's supposed to be kept secret by the vote, but could be shared with the schemer in order to get paid. This would make vote-buying schemes much more manageable.

However, there seems to be considerable risk to the voter. What's to prevent the schemer from not paying up? The vote is already cast, and what can the voter do? Sue the schemer? For not paying for a bought vote?

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