5 ms·

I'm trying to understand the operation of the rollbook. Is the voter required to go to one specific place to vote? This seems at least moderately inconvenient.

emmelaich 5y ago
No, not necessary to go to a specific place. If someone found voting at two places, that's dealt with afterwards.
dannyw 5y ago
You can vote in any polling place in your state. If you are out of state, you need to go to dedicated interstate polling centers (or vote by mail). The roll book is very, very big, and includes every registered elector in the state. It's alphabetically sorted by last name. Every election official gets their own roll book that they mark names off. The way you are supposed to do it is ask: 1. "What is your name?" (flip through the book and find the right page with the last name, usually just takes a few seconds) 2. "Where do you live?" / "What is your address?" (find the entry with the right name and correct address; if you can't find it, ask them to go to the 'help desk' where a provisional ballot is provided). 3. "Have you voted before in this election?" (they should say no, and then you initial a ballot and hand it to them). These books are centrally checked after the election, so people who vote twice can be investigated.
- HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago
  I wonder and muse about this. Could we possibly use PKI electronically to do this? The gov sends you a private key as your a citizen. We anonymize it somehow. You sign your ballot. I don't have a clue how this would work, but it seems like it could be feasible. Obviously, voting must remain anonymous. Could it happen? I'm guessing this would be similar to presenting your SSN. Its troublesome. But regardless, I'd think that we could prove the voting record. Edit: the more I think about this, I don't think PKI could work. Voter identification would always be available in some way shape or form. I'm not sure this can be solved with tech. Maybe we should just have paper ballets.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    The system you're imagining might theoretically be possible using blind signatures, like the Ecash system invented by David Chaum. My understanding is that if you tried to spend the same coin twice, it would necessarily reveal enough information to allow the network to discover who the private key holder was, and invalidate their transaction. Your final conclusion is correct, though. Any system which relies on people having to trust specialist auditors to tell them whether the "correct" software has counted the votes is a system which is fatally vulnerable to FUD and conspiracy theories, even if by some miracle the hardware and software were all open source and worked perfectly.
    - HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago
      This is just a thought experiment. What if you registered to vote and the goverment gave you a $3.00 bill. This bill can't be used as cash (I guess, I'm just working through the problem). You present....damn it I've already figured out a half dozen problems with this idea. Give the bill to your buddy and he can vote how he wants. Do you have any ideas or recommendations to this problem? Every citizen whom is eligible to vote should be able to. Every vote should be counted correctly. It is a hard problem to solve, and I would guess whoever solves this problem - especially for the long term - would be able to help out humanity in a way that hasn't been invoked in a long, long time. Ughhh. The world is tough sometimes. Reminds me of Idiocracy - Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr., fuck you, I'm eating.
thebrid 5y ago
The UK has a similar system. You are required to go to a specific place to vote but these are normally very local and just for your neighbourhood, e.g. in the local school or church hall. My last three polling stations have been 0.1, 0.6 and 0.2 miles away. There are 35k polling stations for 47m voters so each station has to process only ~1,300 voters in 15 hours. Queueing is unusual in my experience. Postal votes and voting by proxy are also options.
- jhgb 5y ago
  We have it similar in the Czech Republic, except it's around ~700 eligible voters per polling place. Since the upcoming parliamentary elections are likely to have a ~60% participation, a team of several people at any random polling place is facing the insurmountable task of counting ~400 ballots in several hours.
- kergonath 5y ago
  Voting in the UK is a very smooth process. It's very easy to take 5 minutes to go and vote before or after work, or during a break if you work locally.

emmelaich 5y ago

No, not necessary to go to a specific place. If someone found voting at two places, that's dealt with afterwards.

dannyw 5y ago

You can vote in any polling place in your state. If you are out of state, you need to go to dedicated interstate polling centers (or vote by mail). The roll book is very, very big, and includes every registered elector in the state. It's alphabetically sorted by last name. Every election official gets their own roll book that they mark names off. The way you are supposed to do it is ask: 1. "What is your name?" (flip through the book and find the right page with the last name, usually just takes a few seconds) 2. "Where do you live?" / "What is your address?" (find the entry with the right name and correct address; if you can't find it, ask them to go to the 'help desk' where a provisional ballot is provided). 3. "Have you voted before in this election?" (they should say no, and then you initial a ballot and hand it to them). These books are centrally checked after the election, so people who vote twice can be investigated.

HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago
I wonder and muse about this. Could we possibly use PKI electronically to do this? The gov sends you a private key as your a citizen. We anonymize it somehow. You sign your ballot. I don't have a clue how this would work, but it seems like it could be feasible. Obviously, voting must remain anonymous. Could it happen? I'm guessing this would be similar to presenting your SSN. Its troublesome. But regardless, I'd think that we could prove the voting record. Edit: the more I think about this, I don't think PKI could work. Voter identification would always be available in some way shape or form. I'm not sure this can be solved with tech. Maybe we should just have paper ballets.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  The system you're imagining might theoretically be possible using blind signatures, like the Ecash system invented by David Chaum. My understanding is that if you tried to spend the same coin twice, it would necessarily reveal enough information to allow the network to discover who the private key holder was, and invalidate their transaction. Your final conclusion is correct, though. Any system which relies on people having to trust specialist auditors to tell them whether the "correct" software has counted the votes is a system which is fatally vulnerable to FUD and conspiracy theories, even if by some miracle the hardware and software were all open source and worked perfectly.
  - HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago
    This is just a thought experiment. What if you registered to vote and the goverment gave you a $3.00 bill. This bill can't be used as cash (I guess, I'm just working through the problem). You present....damn it I've already figured out a half dozen problems with this idea. Give the bill to your buddy and he can vote how he wants. Do you have any ideas or recommendations to this problem? Every citizen whom is eligible to vote should be able to. Every vote should be counted correctly. It is a hard problem to solve, and I would guess whoever solves this problem - especially for the long term - would be able to help out humanity in a way that hasn't been invoked in a long, long time. Ughhh. The world is tough sometimes. Reminds me of Idiocracy - Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr., fuck you, I'm eating.

thebrid 5y ago

The UK has a similar system. You are required to go to a specific place to vote but these are normally very local and just for your neighbourhood, e.g. in the local school or church hall. My last three polling stations have been 0.1, 0.6 and 0.2 miles away. There are 35k polling stations for 47m voters so each station has to process only ~1,300 voters in 15 hours. Queueing is unusual in my experience. Postal votes and voting by proxy are also options.

jhgb 5y ago
We have it similar in the Czech Republic, except it's around ~700 eligible voters per polling place. Since the upcoming parliamentary elections are likely to have a ~60% participation, a team of several people at any random polling place is facing the insurmountable task of counting ~400 ballots in several hours.
kergonath 5y ago
Voting in the UK is a very smooth process. It's very easy to take 5 minutes to go and vote before or after work, or during a break if you work locally.