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>> Put a thousand pre-known keys in a hat, one thousand people draw keys from a hat, the key is activated on the blockchain and points to a user-defined voting

by smokeyj 10y ago

>> Put a thousand pre-known keys in a hat, one thousand people draw keys from a hat, the key is activated on the blockchain and points to a user-defined voting wallet. Now you have anonymous cryptographically verifiable voting with double spend protection I just invented a scheme to anonymize votes in 5 minutes. I'm sure if smarter people tried we could definitively solve this. I'm not convinced this is hard as much as people are saying it's hard.

vertex-four 10y ago
So how does this stand up to "show me the private key you used"?
tangent128 10y ago
To prevent coercion, it's not sufficient to allow anonymity; you have to disallow means by which a person can prove how they voted.
- smokeyj 10y ago
  How true is this? Somebody could just take a picture of their ballot (under the threat of violence presumably). Sure they're not supposed to, but at this point we're relying on legislation - where the legislation could say employers aren't allowed to ask for employees voting wallets. Maybe I'm missing something.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    If you mess up your ballot sheet, you can ask for a replacement - at least in the UK. Your original ballot sheet gets recorded specially as having been replaced, and you get a new one which gets counted. The result is that you can discreetly take a photo of your ballot sheet and then go ask for a new one if you're being threatened.
  - geofft 10y ago
    The penalty for taking a picture of your ballot is on you, not the person asking for the picture, and it's at the time the record is created, not when someone asks for it. So, it's perfectly plausible and defensible for me to say "There was a poll monitor, I couldn't take a ballot selfie, sorry." That is much simpler than saying "Hey, 911, my boss just asked me for my ballot proof." (The other thing is that photos of ballots have only become a serious threat in the last few years, and at the moment there's not really voter coercion through those photos, as far as we know. If it becomes a problem, I expect a bigger crackdown on it.)
specialist 10y ago
I just invented a scheme to anonymize votes in 5 minutes. Tada!
- smokeyj 10y ago
  Having a bad day? Just need a little attention? I'll talk to you, specialist :)
geofft 10y ago
1. As others said, the private key proves how you voted. If you can verify it with the private key, you can show the proof to someone else. And if it's a single-use private key, there's no reason for me not to share the private key once I voted. You need to have deniability; I need to be able to revoke my ability to prove how I voted, and moreover I need to be required to revoke it (otherwise I can be compelled not to revoke it). Right now, I am unable to leave the voting booth with any receipt of how I voted, even if I wanted to (i.e, even if someone else wanted me to). I can see my vote, and election monitors prevent anyone else from seeing it until it leaves my hands. In most places in the US, I can't even take a cell phone photo of my votes, and that's a good thing because nobody can ask me to take a cell phone photo of my votes. 2. If they're pre-known, anonymous, single-use keys, nothing prevents a corrupt election official from keeping a copy of the key and voting before the voter gets home. The voter has no way to prove that they didn't vote and that someone stole their key.
- patmorgan235 10y ago
  a solution to 1 would be ring signatures as used by many crypto note base currency. They group unrelated input and outputs to give all the parties involved plausible deniability to who paid what to who. So your vote would be mixed with a group of others so no one can tell exactly who vote for just that the right number of votes were cast.

by smokeyj 10y ago

vertex-four 10y ago

So how does this stand up to "show me the private key you used"?

tangent128 10y ago

To prevent coercion, it's not sufficient to allow anonymity; you have to disallow means by which a person can prove how they voted.

smokeyj 10y ago
How true is this? Somebody could just take a picture of their ballot (under the threat of violence presumably). Sure they're not supposed to, but at this point we're relying on legislation - where the legislation could say employers aren't allowed to ask for employees voting wallets. Maybe I'm missing something.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  If you mess up your ballot sheet, you can ask for a replacement - at least in the UK. Your original ballot sheet gets recorded specially as having been replaced, and you get a new one which gets counted. The result is that you can discreetly take a photo of your ballot sheet and then go ask for a new one if you're being threatened.
- geofft 10y ago
  The penalty for taking a picture of your ballot is on you, not the person asking for the picture, and it's at the time the record is created, not when someone asks for it. So, it's perfectly plausible and defensible for me to say "There was a poll monitor, I couldn't take a ballot selfie, sorry." That is much simpler than saying "Hey, 911, my boss just asked me for my ballot proof." (The other thing is that photos of ballots have only become a serious threat in the last few years, and at the moment there's not really voter coercion through those photos, as far as we know. If it becomes a problem, I expect a bigger crackdown on it.)

specialist 10y ago

I just invented a scheme to anonymize votes in 5 minutes. Tada!

smokeyj 10y ago
Having a bad day? Just need a little attention? I'll talk to you, specialist :)

geofft 10y ago

1. As others said, the private key proves how you voted. If you can verify it with the private key, you can show the proof to someone else. And if it's a single-use private key, there's no reason for me not to share the private key once I voted. You need to have deniability; I need to be able to revoke my ability to prove how I voted, and moreover I need to be required to revoke it (otherwise I can be compelled not to revoke it). Right now, I am unable to leave the voting booth with any receipt of how I voted, even if I wanted to (i.e, even if someone else wanted me to). I can see my vote, and election monitors prevent anyone else from seeing it until it leaves my hands. In most places in the US, I can't even take a cell phone photo of my votes, and that's a good thing because nobody can ask me to take a cell phone photo of my votes. 2. If they're pre-known, anonymous, single-use keys, nothing prevents a corrupt election official from keeping a copy of the key and voting before the voter gets home. The voter has no way to prove that they didn't vote and that someone stole their key.

patmorgan235 10y ago
a solution to 1 would be ring signatures as used by many crypto note base currency. They group unrelated input and outputs to give all the parties involved plausible deniability to who paid what to who. So your vote would be mixed with a group of others so no one can tell exactly who vote for just that the right number of votes were cast.