3 ms·

The average Joe doesn't want the nerds to pick the president. Also, don't forget it's a secret ballot, and we do not have any good database of people with publ

The average Joe doesn't want the nerds to pick the president. Also, don't forget it's a secret ballot, and we do not have any good database of people with public keys in this country. What the hell am I supposed to make of a ledger with 100s of million anonymous public keys? Surely I cannot claim that relates 1-1 with the choices of real people.

dnpp123 6y ago
I'm definitely opposed to 'electronic' voting, but the problem you are describing is easily solvable with asymmetric cryptography. You'd have your private key on your 'voting card' (unsure how you call it in the US) with some pw and the machine would just scan it, ask your password. You just need the proof that someone having a private key associated with a public key on a public record has signed, not necessarily know to which public key it is associated. But there would be so much problems with such a system that I would'nt even know where to start..
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Right. It's not that anonymity is impossible, but that anonymity is one requirement we can remove and make the problem tractable again. There may be other such "straws that broke the camels back", but IMO anonymity is one property that makes a cryptosystem far less intuitive even to me. It's the bridge I never advocate crossing unless people with more security knowledge than me go to great lengths to demonstrate otherwise.
egypturnash 6y ago
This is America. Your social security number will make a perfectly fine secret key! It works so well as a secret for everything else in your life, after all. I'm sure nobody else has has it, or can acquire it for use in mass voter fraud!
- jsjohnst 6y ago
  I realize you are being sarcastic, but: > Your social security number will make a perfectly fine secret key! Never in its history was it a secret key anymore than your drivers license number, it’s an ID number that can be used to look you up in a DB like a username would be. The problem is, that despite everyone just instinctively knowing a username needs to be paired with a password (or ideally multiple factors, but that isn’t as universal in understanding yet), no such thing exists currently to pair with your social security number.
eloff 6y ago
The first point is a strawman. The second is obviously something the system would have to be built for, and that would be arguably more verifiable than what we have now.

dnpp123 6y ago

I'm definitely opposed to 'electronic' voting, but the problem you are describing is easily solvable with asymmetric cryptography. You'd have your private key on your 'voting card' (unsure how you call it in the US) with some pw and the machine would just scan it, ask your password. You just need the proof that someone having a private key associated with a public key on a public record has signed, not necessarily know to which public key it is associated. But there would be so much problems with such a system that I would'nt even know where to start..

Ericson2314 6y ago
Right. It's not that anonymity is impossible, but that anonymity is one requirement we can remove and make the problem tractable again. There may be other such "straws that broke the camels back", but IMO anonymity is one property that makes a cryptosystem far less intuitive even to me. It's the bridge I never advocate crossing unless people with more security knowledge than me go to great lengths to demonstrate otherwise.

egypturnash 6y ago

This is America. Your social security number will make a perfectly fine secret key! It works so well as a secret for everything else in your life, after all. I'm sure nobody else has has it, or can acquire it for use in mass voter fraud!

jsjohnst 6y ago
I realize you are being sarcastic, but: > Your social security number will make a perfectly fine secret key! Never in its history was it a secret key anymore than your drivers license number, it’s an ID number that can be used to look you up in a DB like a username would be. The problem is, that despite everyone just instinctively knowing a username needs to be paired with a password (or ideally multiple factors, but that isn’t as universal in understanding yet), no such thing exists currently to pair with your social security number.

eloff 6y ago

The first point is a strawman. The second is obviously something the system would have to be built for, and that would be arguably more verifiable than what we have now.