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The 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

The 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..

tiglionabbit 10y ago
> the public key must be known, which means that someone's vote cannot be anonymous. How does this follow?
- castratikron 10y ago
  In order to verify a signature, you'd need to know the public key of the person who signed the vote. At least that's how I understand it.
  - Findeton 10y ago
    The contents of the ballot can still remain anonymous. You create a plaintext ballot, then you encrypt the ballot with the election authorities' keys, then you sign your encrypted ballot with your own private key (then you send the ballot to the server). You are signing a ballot that is already encrypted.
    - bn-usd-mistake 10y ago
      Unless I misunderstood you, the government would know who I specifically voted for in your scheme? That would be a huge no-go!
      - Findeton 10y ago
        Yes, you misunderstood me. Imagine there are many election authorities, maybe perhaps every candidate has their own election authority. Each election authority creates their own public/private key and the public key of the election is created by joining the public key of all authorities. Using a mixnet (note: Tor uses mixnets too), you can anonymize and decrypt the ballots while preserving the secrecy of the ballot. Not even the servers know at any point that you voted to Hillary/Trump, but the tally is done. And the whole process is end-to-end verifiable by any external party. It's the magic of math.
delinka 10y ago
You assume that a key pair is (publicly?) associated with an individual. I can generate a key pair, sign something (publishing the public part of the key, but not the fact that it was me owning it), then discard the key pair. How will you associate the public key to me?
- castratikron 10y ago
  What's stopping a single person from generating multiple keys?

tiglionabbit 10y ago

> the public key must be known, which means that someone's vote cannot be anonymous. How does this follow?

castratikron 10y ago
In order to verify a signature, you'd need to know the public key of the person who signed the vote. At least that's how I understand it.
- Findeton 10y ago
  The contents of the ballot can still remain anonymous. You create a plaintext ballot, then you encrypt the ballot with the election authorities' keys, then you sign your encrypted ballot with your own private key (then you send the ballot to the server). You are signing a ballot that is already encrypted.
  - bn-usd-mistake 10y ago
    Unless I misunderstood you, the government would know who I specifically voted for in your scheme? That would be a huge no-go!
    - Findeton 10y ago
      Yes, you misunderstood me. Imagine there are many election authorities, maybe perhaps every candidate has their own election authority. Each election authority creates their own public/private key and the public key of the election is created by joining the public key of all authorities. Using a mixnet (note: Tor uses mixnets too), you can anonymize and decrypt the ballots while preserving the secrecy of the ballot. Not even the servers know at any point that you voted to Hillary/Trump, but the tally is done. And the whole process is end-to-end verifiable by any external party. It's the magic of math.

delinka 10y ago

You assume that a key pair is (publicly?) associated with an individual. I can generate a key pair, sign something (publishing the public part of the key, but not the fact that it was me owning it), then discard the key pair. How will you associate the public key to me?

castratikron 10y ago
What's stopping a single person from generating multiple keys?