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My ideal voting system would allow me to have a real time feed of votes as they come in, so that at the end of the night I can check my records vs the "official

• michaelbuckbee 8y ago
  A feature/detriment of per vote verification is that it opens up the entire system to vote buying - are you describing verifying that your vote happened, or who it was cast for?
  • tzs 8y ago
    Not necessarily. Systems that allow you to verify that your vote was included and counted toward the candidate you selected in the booth, but do not allow you to prove to a third party who you voted for, are known, such as Scantegrity [1]. It sounds like the new system has this feature, and also another key feature of Scantegrity which is that the tallying can be done publicly and independently verified. From the article: > The optical-scan system will print a receipt with a cryptographic representation of the voter’s choices. After the election, the cryptographic values for all ballots will be published on a web site, where voters can verify that their ballot and votes are among them. > “That receipt does not permit you to prove anything about how you voted, but does permit you to prove that the system accurately captured your intent and your vote is in the final tally,” Kiniry said. > Members of the public will also be able to use the cryptographic values to independently tally the votes to verify the election results so that tabulating the votes isn't a closed process solely in the hands of election officials. > “Any organization [interested in verifying the election results] that hires a moderately smart software engineer [can] write their own tabulator,” Kiniry said. “We fully expect that Common Cause, League of Women Voters and the [political parties] will all have their own tabulators and verifiers.” [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
    • michaelbuckbee 8y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to reply, I had not heard of Scantegrity before and it seems like a really novel approach.
• snowwrestler 8y ago
  Your ideal voting system is vulnerable to coercion ("log in and show me who you voted for or else") and phishing. Voting systems should provide confidence to voters that votes are counted correctly, but not permit anyone, including the voters themselves, to learn how they voted after the ballot is cast.
  • allworknoplay 8y ago
    Yes, thank you. People frequently forget critical lessons from history :p
    • bushin 8y ago
      like republicans are making US voting system horrible so that they could have a chance of winning, that lesson?
  • memory_grep 8y ago
    Laws can prevent coercion, at least by major businesses, but another concern is people selling their votes on a black market. Still, to me, the benefits of an open and verifiable voting system would outweigh the downsides.
    • macintux 8y ago
      I'll take a paper ballot system with electronic counting, thus something that can be verified, over something that leaves people afraid to vote because it's no longer truly anonymous. I've been around too many women in abusive relationships to feel comfortable with that approach.
    • snowwrestler 8y ago
      A simple secret ballot by paper is both open (anyone can observe the ballot casting and counting) and verifiable (the vote count can be repeated to confirm the totals). Voters don't need to be able to verify their vote post-election because a) they cast their ballot, so they can just remember who they voted for, and b) they can't change their decision, so there is no need to have a record of it.
• arendtio 8y ago
  How do you validate that there are no 'additional' votes? Why do you require a password? Simply give them an anonymous id when they vote.
  • swalsh 8y ago
    I saw value in being able to confirm the public record matches what you did in the booth. When you vote there would be a record of the registration Id voted for this particular election id. Information that you voted is already available... so this component is not a change to the system really.
• jedberg 8y ago
  The problem with any voting system that allows you to verify the vote after the fact is that it makes it too easy to coerce someone to vote a certain way. I can promise you money (or threaten you with violence) to vote a certain way, but you can't follow me into the booth, and no matter how you make me "verify" I can always change the vote between verification and depositing it in the box. If there is a way to verify after, then I can withhold payment until you verify your vote, or hurt you after I've seen your vote isn't what I wanted. By not allowing after the fact verification, it means that can't happen, and greatly reduces coerced votes. So as cool as it would be to verify my vote after the fact, it has too many unintended consequences.
  • zepolen 8y ago
    Using 'something you know' it's possible to both verify how your vote went and at the same time not allow someone else to know, even if forced. A simple example would be assigning a random color to each option per person. So blue means Trump for you. Hilary for someone else. You only need to get people into a booth once, to learn which color is which option. From there on in, verification is as simple as looking at the color to make sure it's correct. No one else can be sure what the color means. Same principle can be done on multiple votes, though information will leak. So if you're coerced more than once you'd need to regenerate your colors. So while this solution stops the 'violence' coercion it won't stop 'sale' coercion. Also the other problem is people will write their colors down or forget them - which is why as you say verification after the fact causes way too many problems.
    • jedberg 8y ago
      But there would be no way to know that the colors and their meanings weren't switched in the case you wanted actual verification.
• beat 8y ago
  Altering your vote after the fact is not the actual problem, though.
• thanatos_dem 8y ago
  In addition to the issues of vote buying described in other comments, you’re also amplifying the spoiler effect to a massive degree with a real time vote feed. Anyone in later time zones will be less incentivized to vote if they can see the results of all the votes that came before them. IMHO even exit polling should be outlawed. This day-long televised circus during elections is really damaging to democracy...