2 ms·
There's a pretty easy way to solve this. Give everyone a random ID/password combination (in an unmarked envelope, so no one knows who got what). To vote, you
by miki123211 6y ago
There's a pretty easy way to solve this.
Give everyone a random ID/password combination (in an unmarked envelope, so no one knows who got what).
To vote, you connect to the system, either through a website or even an old, DTMF-based phone system for rular areas, and you cast your vote.
After voting ends, a list of all IDs and their votes is published. If an ID didn't vote, it's marked appropriately.
There should be lots of separate lists, perhaps one per street/district/village, depending on population density. That way, it would be hard to add fake IDs, while still maintaining voter anonymity.
The system is easy for anyone to understand, works on paper as well as electronically, doesn't require complicated cryptographic implementations which might contain bugs, and is much easier to reason about, write and audit.
The only drawback is the ability to prove who you voted for, perhaps with a photo, but all current mail-in-voting systems and some in-person-voting system suffer from that problem too, and bribing voters isn't really that much of a problem.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago>The only drawback is the ability to prove who you voted for, That's pretty much the biggest problem to have in any election...
- macNchz 6y agoThis is still vulnerable to a DoS attack as the parent suggested. Not terribly difficult for an individual to tie up all the phone lines or overload the web voting portal. I also agree with the parent comment re hubris about this stuff: the incentives are immensely high for someone to compromise a system like this, and it only takes a small oversight to cause a huge disaster. Everyone gets a random password? Better hope whoever is generating them used a good RNG and a proper source of entropy...