3 ms·

Without a secret ballot, you cannot have democracy. Instead, you have a rule of those who bought the most votes. If voting does not happen in public, you canno

Without a secret ballot, you cannot have democracy. Instead, you have a rule of those who bought the most votes. If voting does not happen in public, you cannot have democracy either. Instead, you have a rule of those who are best at manipulating the vote. Electronic voting is either not secret or not public. You cannot use it to scale democracy, it destroys it.

dogma1138 8y ago
Like others have mentioned it’s easy to develop a cryptographic system which would provide both vote assurance and and vote anonymity the problem is that unlike paper ballots people can’t understand those systems and people don’t trust what they can’t understand and democracy doesn’t work when there is no trust. Everyone can count paper ballots having 10 crypto experts that given that they are experts wouldn’t say that a system is 100% foolproof isn’t the same thing. But if you solve this problem which is trust in something you can’t ubdsrstnsd, you can definitely scale it and have it both being secret and verifiable.
currymj 8y ago
you can definitely have cryptographic schemes where individual votes are secret but the result is publicly verifiable. i don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea because it’s better to have a low tech system that people can understand, even if it’s a little cumbersome and expensive. but it is possible!
gpm 8y ago
I wonder if this is just a case of preferring the devil we know. "Without regular (daily) votes you cannot have a democracy. Instead, you have a series of temporary dictators selected from those with the connections, charisma, and budget to run campaigns and get put in charge." Experimenting with something as important as our form of government is really scary, but it's not clear to me that it's more likely to destroy it than improve it.

3 ms·

Without a secret ballot, you cannot have democracy. Instead, you have a rule of those who bought the most votes. If voting does not happen in public, you canno

by anoncake 8y ago

dogma1138 8y ago
Like others have mentioned it’s easy to develop a cryptographic system which would provide both vote assurance and and vote anonymity the problem is that unlike paper ballots people can’t understand those systems and people don’t trust what they can’t understand and democracy doesn’t work when there is no trust. Everyone can count paper ballots having 10 crypto experts that given that they are experts wouldn’t say that a system is 100% foolproof isn’t the same thing. But if you solve this problem which is trust in something you can’t ubdsrstnsd, you can definitely scale it and have it both being secret and verifiable.
currymj 8y ago
you can definitely have cryptographic schemes where individual votes are secret but the result is publicly verifiable. i don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea because it’s better to have a low tech system that people can understand, even if it’s a little cumbersome and expensive. but it is possible!
gpm 8y ago
I wonder if this is just a case of preferring the devil we know. "Without regular (daily) votes you cannot have a democracy. Instead, you have a series of temporary dictators selected from those with the connections, charisma, and budget to run campaigns and get put in charge." Experimenting with something as important as our form of government is really scary, but it's not clear to me that it's more likely to destroy it than improve it.