4 ms·

Have to drop anonymity from voting. Yes, I know there are down sides but large scale corruption on a transparent system is difficult.

infotainment 2y ago
Fun fact: North Korea uses non-anonymous voting and it works great! 100% turnout, and the party-selected winners always win! You’re always free to non-anonymously vote for another candidate of course. What could go wrong?
- osigurdson 2y ago
  No voting system can overcome such a regime on its own. I don't even know why NK bothers with elections. They should just claim they are a monarchy, ordained by God. No one believes their election results anyway.
brendoelfrendo 2y ago
Absolutely the hell not. Secret ballots are integral to free and fair elections. Once you lose anonymity, you open the door to a whole host of other issues, including the obvious potential for political oppression.
- patrick451 2y ago
  Anonymous elections aren't working either.
  - cassianoleal 2y ago
    So, throw out the baby with the bath water?
    - mbrumlow 2y ago
      Yes.
- osigurdson 2y ago
  Everything is a tradeoff. It would be better than the current situation. Difficult to politically oppress wide swaths of the population on a person by person basis. Furthermore, voting regions are not anonymous (in some systems at least), why not simply oppress entire regions?
  - brendoelfrendo 2y ago
    Which current situation are we referring to here? In Venezuela, if every vote were tied to a specific identified person, their government could still ignore that and doctor the result. The only thing that changes is that now there is a list of opposition voters in the hands of a hostile government. If the goal is to allow individuals to audit their vote and ensure that the government counted it correctly, it is possible to do that without compromising anonymity. If the goal is to release a public list of every person who voted and who they voted for... I think you're insane and drastically underestimate the capacity for voter coercion and political violence.
  - cassianoleal 2y ago
    > Difficult to politically oppress wide swaths of the population on a person by person basis In the Brazilian Old Republic (pre-1930), that was widely practiced. Historians call it "voto de cabresto" (loosely translated to "halter vote"). > why not simply oppress entire regions? That's what in Brazil is called a "curral eleitoral" ("electoral corral"). The latter still exists and I imagine exists in many countries. Its effectiveness is highly curbed with anonymous voting though. In the Old Republic, where voting was not anonymous, the electoral corral combined with the halter vote meant very few people were free to vote according to their wish. Local oppression is a powerful tool.
olalonde 2y ago
You could have a pseudonymous voting system where you pick a unique username and when votes are published, you make sure your username is included in the data. That wouldn't prevent someone from inserting fake votes though.
layer8 2y ago
There are voting protocols where every voter can check that their vote is correctly represented, without breaking anonymity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...
southernplaces7 2y ago
Excellent idea. With de-anonymized voting, the not at all corrupt, totally non-violent ruling regime would never take advantage of the added ability to know and threaten specific people who voted for the opposition. As should be obvious, anonymous voting may be far from perfect if other parts of the electoral process are deeply rigged, but it at least prevents the blatant dangers of being personally afraid to even cast a vote against the leader even if you know your vote might get papered over with electoral rigging. A government like Venezuela's wouldn't care if that level of transparency made their vote counts look like even more obvious frauds. Its electoral victories already look bad and it doesn't stop anything they do. But at least they can't tacitly coerce voters into not even casting the "wrong" vote.
- osigurdson 2y ago
  >> threaten specific people who voted for the opposition This is Venezuela. If the people want the country back, they can't expect to simply lead regular lives. >> But at least they can't tacitly coerce voters into not even casting the "wrong" vote. Everything is a trade-off. I believe it is harder to coerce voters than to not bother looking at the votes at all and declaring victory.
  - Someone 2y ago
    With anonymous voting, resistance can grow over time. Election #1 may see 1% of voters vote against the despot. Encouraged by that, the people increases that to 10% in election #2. Further encouragement sees that go to 60% in election #3. With non-anonymous voting, the people would still be encouraged by that 1%, but also seeing 1% of voters lose their job/get beaten/go to jail/… puts a serious damper on that encouragement leading to “I’ll vote against next time”. That’s why non-anonymous voting doesn’t work against despots.
    - osigurdson 2y ago
      >> That’s why non-anonymous voting doesn’t work against despots I think this can be shorted to "voting doesn't work against despots".

infotainment 2y ago

Fun fact: North Korea uses non-anonymous voting and it works great! 100% turnout, and the party-selected winners always win! You’re always free to non-anonymously vote for another candidate of course. What could go wrong?

osigurdson 2y ago
No voting system can overcome such a regime on its own. I don't even know why NK bothers with elections. They should just claim they are a monarchy, ordained by God. No one believes their election results anyway.

brendoelfrendo 2y ago

Absolutely the hell not. Secret ballots are integral to free and fair elections. Once you lose anonymity, you open the door to a whole host of other issues, including the obvious potential for political oppression.

patrick451 2y ago
Anonymous elections aren't working either.
- cassianoleal 2y ago
  So, throw out the baby with the bath water?
  - mbrumlow 2y ago
    Yes.
osigurdson 2y ago
Everything is a tradeoff. It would be better than the current situation. Difficult to politically oppress wide swaths of the population on a person by person basis. Furthermore, voting regions are not anonymous (in some systems at least), why not simply oppress entire regions?
- brendoelfrendo 2y ago
  Which current situation are we referring to here? In Venezuela, if every vote were tied to a specific identified person, their government could still ignore that and doctor the result. The only thing that changes is that now there is a list of opposition voters in the hands of a hostile government. If the goal is to allow individuals to audit their vote and ensure that the government counted it correctly, it is possible to do that without compromising anonymity. If the goal is to release a public list of every person who voted and who they voted for... I think you're insane and drastically underestimate the capacity for voter coercion and political violence.
- cassianoleal 2y ago
  > Difficult to politically oppress wide swaths of the population on a person by person basis In the Brazilian Old Republic (pre-1930), that was widely practiced. Historians call it "voto de cabresto" (loosely translated to "halter vote"). > why not simply oppress entire regions? That's what in Brazil is called a "curral eleitoral" ("electoral corral"). The latter still exists and I imagine exists in many countries. Its effectiveness is highly curbed with anonymous voting though. In the Old Republic, where voting was not anonymous, the electoral corral combined with the halter vote meant very few people were free to vote according to their wish. Local oppression is a powerful tool.

olalonde 2y ago

You could have a pseudonymous voting system where you pick a unique username and when votes are published, you make sure your username is included in the data. That wouldn't prevent someone from inserting fake votes though.

layer8 2y ago

There are voting protocols where every voter can check that their vote is correctly represented, without breaking anonymity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...

southernplaces7 2y ago

Excellent idea. With de-anonymized voting, the not at all corrupt, totally non-violent ruling regime would never take advantage of the added ability to know and threaten specific people who voted for the opposition. As should be obvious, anonymous voting may be far from perfect if other parts of the electoral process are deeply rigged, but it at least prevents the blatant dangers of being personally afraid to even cast a vote against the leader even if you know your vote might get papered over with electoral rigging. A government like Venezuela's wouldn't care if that level of transparency made their vote counts look like even more obvious frauds. Its electoral victories already look bad and it doesn't stop anything they do. But at least they can't tacitly coerce voters into not even casting the "wrong" vote.

osigurdson 2y ago
>> threaten specific people who voted for the opposition This is Venezuela. If the people want the country back, they can't expect to simply lead regular lives. >> But at least they can't tacitly coerce voters into not even casting the "wrong" vote. Everything is a trade-off. I believe it is harder to coerce voters than to not bother looking at the votes at all and declaring victory.
- Someone 2y ago
  With anonymous voting, resistance can grow over time. Election #1 may see 1% of voters vote against the despot. Encouraged by that, the people increases that to 10% in election #2. Further encouragement sees that go to 60% in election #3. With non-anonymous voting, the people would still be encouraged by that 1%, but also seeing 1% of voters lose their job/get beaten/go to jail/… puts a serious damper on that encouragement leading to “I’ll vote against next time”. That’s why non-anonymous voting doesn’t work against despots.
  - osigurdson 2y ago
    >> That’s why non-anonymous voting doesn’t work against despots I think this can be shorted to "voting doesn't work against despots".