3 ms·

Votes being indistinguishable after castion is a pretty importsnt feature for hindering large scale fraud, as a second party has no way of verifying your choice

Votes being indistinguishable after castion is a pretty importsnt feature for hindering large scale fraud, as a second party has no way of verifying your choice afterwards.

mirekrusin 7y ago
If you generate ie. random 32 bytes attached to vote, nobody will infer anything from it, except you, who know it.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Yes, and then your coercers will ask it from you so they can verify you did as demanded. Then need to provide 32 random and unique bytes attached to a vote that has the stipulated outcome. Good luck achieving that by randomly guessing a token.
  - jaimeyap 7y ago
    I might be mistaken. But either you have the ability to verify your specific vote was cast, for the person you expected to cast it for. Or you don't. It would seem impossible to offer election confidence to the majority of people without a simple system that has this property. If kidnapping and torture are on the table for your threat model. I think most people's voting record could be figured out with near 100% accuracy if they get access to your computer logins, emails, hacker news account, and all your social media accounts. Which according to your coercion model, they totally could. No need to go after your vote token specifically. So unless the voting system singles you out in particular (which a random token wouldn't. Every vote would have one). Ruling it out as a solution because of a super low probability scenario seems like a misattribution of probability in the face of clear value (ie. easy and private verifiability by all parties). Having secure elections is how we create a world where no one has to worry about coercers coming after them.
    - nabla9 7y ago
      You underestimate this treat model. We know from the history that if votes can be checked, the misuse will increase. * In traditional families women will effectively lose their vote. * Vote buying becomes possible. * fellow party or church members start to check the votes. The ability to use smartphones to take pictures in ballot box is already threatening secret ballot. Let's remove secret ballot so that we can have secret ballot is not valid solution.
      - jaimeyap 7y ago
        It seems like the argument here reduces to "personally verifiable votes should never exist". > In traditional families women will effectively lose their vote. People can lie. That's the only recourse they have today right? Would producing a "plausible deniability token" to show to adversaries suffice here to provide usable cover? > Vote buying becomes possible. This is already possible. Though you are right that it is not strictly verifiable today. But I would argue that we lack data on how many people would take money to vote X in todays system, and then vote Y instead and lie about it. If this set is tiny, then this problem doesn't grow much does it? > fellow party or church members start to check the votes This should simply be illegal. Bright line. Your vote is private and no-one or organization shall be allowed to force you to disclose it. --- It seems again like the arguments here are sort of baby/bath water. There are outlier problems preventing this from being perfect. Yes. But the benefit of a truly verifiable election would inoculate us against mass election hacking. Which increasingly seems like a genuine threat we need to deal with. Are the outlier problems not worth the price of preserving democracy?
        nabla9 7y ago
        > There are outlier problems preventing this from being perfect These are not outlier problems. I have been election official in Finland and it's not rare to see husband trying to make his wife to show the ballot. Smartphones are already creating problems that are hard to quantify. The real solution comes from doing basic things right. Electoral observation can be improved. Paper ballots standard where ballots can be quickly counted using electronica counters from multiple suppliers (different parties can bring their own) can make voting both secure and safe.
  - mirekrusin 7y ago
    You can use zero knowlege proofs for that, you don't need to reveal which vote is yours, just the proof that you've voted.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Votes being indistinguishable after castion is a pretty importsnt feature for hindering large scale fraud, as a second party has no way of verifying your choice afterwards.

mirekrusin 7y ago

If you generate ie. random 32 bytes attached to vote, nobody will infer anything from it, except you, who know it.

SiempreViernes 7y ago
Yes, and then your coercers will ask it from you so they can verify you did as demanded. Then need to provide 32 random and unique bytes attached to a vote that has the stipulated outcome. Good luck achieving that by randomly guessing a token.
- jaimeyap 7y ago
  I might be mistaken. But either you have the ability to verify your specific vote was cast, for the person you expected to cast it for. Or you don't. It would seem impossible to offer election confidence to the majority of people without a simple system that has this property. If kidnapping and torture are on the table for your threat model. I think most people's voting record could be figured out with near 100% accuracy if they get access to your computer logins, emails, hacker news account, and all your social media accounts. Which according to your coercion model, they totally could. No need to go after your vote token specifically. So unless the voting system singles you out in particular (which a random token wouldn't. Every vote would have one). Ruling it out as a solution because of a super low probability scenario seems like a misattribution of probability in the face of clear value (ie. easy and private verifiability by all parties). Having secure elections is how we create a world where no one has to worry about coercers coming after them.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    You underestimate this treat model. We know from the history that if votes can be checked, the misuse will increase. * In traditional families women will effectively lose their vote. * Vote buying becomes possible. * fellow party or church members start to check the votes. The ability to use smartphones to take pictures in ballot box is already threatening secret ballot. Let's remove secret ballot so that we can have secret ballot is not valid solution.
    - jaimeyap 7y ago
      It seems like the argument here reduces to "personally verifiable votes should never exist". > In traditional families women will effectively lose their vote. People can lie. That's the only recourse they have today right? Would producing a "plausible deniability token" to show to adversaries suffice here to provide usable cover? > Vote buying becomes possible. This is already possible. Though you are right that it is not strictly verifiable today. But I would argue that we lack data on how many people would take money to vote X in todays system, and then vote Y instead and lie about it. If this set is tiny, then this problem doesn't grow much does it? > fellow party or church members start to check the votes This should simply be illegal. Bright line. Your vote is private and no-one or organization shall be allowed to force you to disclose it. --- It seems again like the arguments here are sort of baby/bath water. There are outlier problems preventing this from being perfect. Yes. But the benefit of a truly verifiable election would inoculate us against mass election hacking. Which increasingly seems like a genuine threat we need to deal with. Are the outlier problems not worth the price of preserving democracy?
      - nabla9 7y ago
        > There are outlier problems preventing this from being perfect These are not outlier problems. I have been election official in Finland and it's not rare to see husband trying to make his wife to show the ballot. Smartphones are already creating problems that are hard to quantify. The real solution comes from doing basic things right. Electoral observation can be improved. Paper ballots standard where ballots can be quickly counted using electronica counters from multiple suppliers (different parties can bring their own) can make voting both secure and safe.
- mirekrusin 7y ago
  You can use zero knowlege proofs for that, you don't need to reveal which vote is yours, just the proof that you've voted.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]