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Can you trust that you won't be punished for voting the "wrong" way? Or maybe you won't get that raise that you were seeking out because you belong to the wrong

Can you trust that you won't be punished for voting the "wrong" way? Or maybe you won't get that raise that you were seeking out because you belong to the wrong party. Paper ballots keep things anonymous and make it difficult to track who voted for whom. With "digital money" it does not mater as much if people can see who exchanged monies.

amenghra 9y ago
There are ways to build anonymous but auditable voting schemes. Same goes with money, these things called crypto currencies are digital money offering various levels of anonymity.
- pedrocr 9y ago
  >There are ways to build anonymous but auditable voting schemes. None that don't require printing a paper ballot so the voter can check the correct thing was done. And then taking that paper ballot and putting it in a sealed box. And once you've done that the high-tech bits are irrelevant and you're back to the cheap, safe and easy to use voting system we've been using without issue for decades or even centuries.
  - amenghra 9y ago
    You can totally have a blind signature based scheme that doesn't have some of the flaws which are present with paper ballots. Some of the requirements aren't met today (such as having one and only one digital identity for everyone) but it doesn't mean that paper ballots are the only solution.
    - pedrocr 9y ago
      With enough effort you could implement something that still requires printing a receipt but doesn't require the ballot box. The identity issue isn't even a problem in most modern democracies. But that system would be less efficient and be easier to seed discredit since normal people don't understand it. That gives you a riot or two quite quickly. That's the other properly of paper and ballot box that technologues dismiss way too easily. >90% of the population would be able to run a paper election successfully and yet would be hopeless at understanding a complex crypto scheme. That means you quickly lose a key property of elections which is that whoever lost actually accepts that result. From the previous discussion: "Electronic voting is the reverse FizzBuzz. FizzBuzz tests if you know the absolute basics about technology to implement something extremely simple. Electronic voting tests if you are able to reject the use of technology when it doesn't add any advantage and instead creates very hard to solve failure modes. Voting benefits from the use of the extremely simple ballot and box. It benefits from it not being programmable and from the counting method being something that almost all the population is able to carry out let alone understand."
- bobcallme 9y ago
  > There are ways to build anonymous but auditable voting schemes. I have yet to see one that involves a digital voting system. Many of these voting systems are insecure and F/OSS(free and open source) won't fix that. You are giving too many people physical access to these systems at every step of the chain. Many have proposed a "blockchain" based voting scheme, but that takes out the anonymous aspect of voting. > Same goes with money, these things called crypto currencies are digital money offering various levels of anonymity. Yes and none of them provides any anonymity since they all at one point or another reveals too much about a given transaction. With paper ballots, it's really difficult/infeasible to track who voted for whom and is a bit more tamper resistant on a large scale. edit: a word.
  - bitexploder 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot Rivest
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

amenghra 9y ago

There are ways to build anonymous but auditable voting schemes. Same goes with money, these things called crypto currencies are digital money offering various levels of anonymity.

pedrocr 9y ago
>There are ways to build anonymous but auditable voting schemes. None that don't require printing a paper ballot so the voter can check the correct thing was done. And then taking that paper ballot and putting it in a sealed box. And once you've done that the high-tech bits are irrelevant and you're back to the cheap, safe and easy to use voting system we've been using without issue for decades or even centuries.
- amenghra 9y ago
  You can totally have a blind signature based scheme that doesn't have some of the flaws which are present with paper ballots. Some of the requirements aren't met today (such as having one and only one digital identity for everyone) but it doesn't mean that paper ballots are the only solution.
  - pedrocr 9y ago
    With enough effort you could implement something that still requires printing a receipt but doesn't require the ballot box. The identity issue isn't even a problem in most modern democracies. But that system would be less efficient and be easier to seed discredit since normal people don't understand it. That gives you a riot or two quite quickly. That's the other properly of paper and ballot box that technologues dismiss way too easily. >90% of the population would be able to run a paper election successfully and yet would be hopeless at understanding a complex crypto scheme. That means you quickly lose a key property of elections which is that whoever lost actually accepts that result. From the previous discussion: "Electronic voting is the reverse FizzBuzz. FizzBuzz tests if you know the absolute basics about technology to implement something extremely simple. Electronic voting tests if you are able to reject the use of technology when it doesn't add any advantage and instead creates very hard to solve failure modes. Voting benefits from the use of the extremely simple ballot and box. It benefits from it not being programmable and from the counting method being something that almost all the population is able to carry out let alone understand."
bobcallme 9y ago
> There are ways to build anonymous but auditable voting schemes. I have yet to see one that involves a digital voting system. Many of these voting systems are insecure and F/OSS(free and open source) won't fix that. You are giving too many people physical access to these systems at every step of the chain. Many have proposed a "blockchain" based voting scheme, but that takes out the anonymous aspect of voting. > Same goes with money, these things called crypto currencies are digital money offering various levels of anonymity. Yes and none of them provides any anonymity since they all at one point or another reveals too much about a given transaction. With paper ballots, it's really difficult/infeasible to track who voted for whom and is a bit more tamper resistant on a large scale. edit: a word.
- bitexploder 9y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot Rivest
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]