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Do we have a cryptographic protocol for verifiable elections yet? Where someone can be assured their vote was counted (and counted correctly), but cannot be coe

Do we have a cryptographic protocol for verifiable elections yet? Where someone can be assured their vote was counted (and counted correctly), but cannot be coerced, nor prove, whom they voted for?

tzs 2y ago
Yes, several. A particularly interesting one is Scantegrity [1]: > Scantegrity is a security enhancement for optical scan voting systems, providing such systems with end-to-end (E2E) verifiability of election results. It uses confirmation codes to allow a voter to prove to themselves that their ballot is included unmodified in the final tally. The codes are privacy-preserving and offer no proof of which candidate a voter voted for. Receipts can be safely shown without compromising ballot secrecy. > Scantegrity II prints the confirmation codes in invisible ink to improve usability and dispute resolution. As the system relies on cryptographic techniques, the ability to validate an election outcome is both software independent as well as independent of faults in the physical chain-of-custody of the paper ballots. The system was developed by a team of researchers including cryptographers David Chaum and Ron Rivest. It works with the common "fill in the bubble" paper ballots that can be counted by simple optical scanners (or by hand). The only extra hardware you need to add it to an existing "fill in the bubble" system is that you have to use a special marker to fill in the bubbles. Here's a paper giving details [2]. Here's a paper proving coercion resistance [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity [2] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/chaum/chaum_html/index.html https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/c... [3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  This is very interesting, yet it feels like it doesn't address the real issue. Most election sceptics would probably disbelieve a sophisticated system just the same, or not believe it is privacy-preserving. If there are academic experts coming out to really argue the system is watertight, that would only make it worse!
lend000 2y ago
To have verifiable elections you need three properties: 1. The public should be able to identify who voted with some PII (so that people can audit for ineligible voters, deceased people, fake people, etc.) 2. The votes themselves should be private to the public, but verifiable to individuals. 3. There is an incentive-based consensus mechanism to prevent vote administrators from flipping a small number of people's votes (but significant enough to throw an election) and hoping they don't talk about it. This is where I think blockchain has a real application outside of finance.

Do we have a cryptographic protocol for verifiable elections yet? Where someone can be assured their vote was counted (and counted correctly), but cannot be coerced, nor prove, whom they voted for?

tzs 2y ago

Yes, several. A particularly interesting one is Scantegrity [1]: > Scantegrity is a security enhancement for optical scan voting systems, providing such systems with end-to-end (E2E) verifiability of election results. It uses confirmation codes to allow a voter to prove to themselves that their ballot is included unmodified in the final tally. The codes are privacy-preserving and offer no proof of which candidate a voter voted for. Receipts can be safely shown without compromising ballot secrecy. > Scantegrity II prints the confirmation codes in invisible ink to improve usability and dispute resolution. As the system relies on cryptographic techniques, the ability to validate an election outcome is both software independent as well as independent of faults in the physical chain-of-custody of the paper ballots. The system was developed by a team of researchers including cryptographers David Chaum and Ron Rivest. It works with the common "fill in the bubble" paper ballots that can be counted by simple optical scanners (or by hand). The only extra hardware you need to add it to an existing "fill in the bubble" system is that you have to use a special marker to fill in the bubbles. Here's a paper giving details [2]. Here's a paper proving coercion resistance [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity [2] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/chaum/chaum_html/index.html https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/c... [3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/502.pdf

rich_sasha 2y ago
This is very interesting, yet it feels like it doesn't address the real issue. Most election sceptics would probably disbelieve a sophisticated system just the same, or not believe it is privacy-preserving. If there are academic experts coming out to really argue the system is watertight, that would only make it worse!

lend000 2y ago

To have verifiable elections you need three properties: 1. The public should be able to identify who voted with some PII (so that people can audit for ineligible voters, deceased people, fake people, etc.) 2. The votes themselves should be private to the public, but verifiable to individuals. 3. There is an incentive-based consensus mechanism to prevent vote administrators from flipping a small number of people's votes (but significant enough to throw an election) and hoping they don't talk about it. This is where I think blockchain has a real application outside of finance.