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Such a scheme has a huge flaw: it allows extortion/coercion. Suppose I am a mob boss and I wish to become (insert position here). I send my goons to inform you
by ReidZB 13y ago
Such a scheme has a huge flaw: it allows extortion/coercion. Suppose I am a mob boss and I wish to become (insert position here). I send my goons to inform you that voting for me is a wise decision because I can offer you protection from the vicious thugs in the area. It would be a shame if the vicious thugs burned your house down, wouldn't it?
So, you'd be forced to reveal your bitvote address to me under threat of violence. Once you vote, I just check that you voted for me. And if you didn't...
A real cryptographic voting system goes to great lengths to prevent this scenario. In such a system, a voter can prove to himself that his vote counted toward the proper party, but crucially the voter cannot prove such to anyone else. This prevents coercion.
Of course, real cryptographic voting systems have a bunch of other nice properties, but this is a really major one that most people overlook.
Example of a cryptographic voting system: Helios (https://vote.heliosvoting.org/ https://vote.heliosvoting.org/). Also see the tech docs (http://documentation.heliosvoting.org/verification-specs/helios-v3-verification-specs http://documentation.heliosvoting.org/verification-specs/hel...). Helios is an online system, so it's not ready for prime-time voting --- it would need to be adapted into an in-person scheme, which cryptographers have already created --- but it does demonstrate the concepts involved.
This is an area of active research, BTW.
- jellicle 13y agoIt's not a huge flaw, since our current voting system (in any country you care to name) allows exactly that, and your scenario is not observed in the wild, since it is illegal.
- tishcros91 13y agoIt's such a blessing that nothing illegal is ever observed in the wild.
- lukeschlather 13y agoi don't think you properly understand the objection. the mob boss may threaten but cannot legally know what you vote
- ReidZB 13y agoThe typical US voting system allows coercion? When I voted, I went into a publicly visible booth, recorded my vote, pressed submit, and went about my business. I suppose I could have been forced to take a picture with a cellphone, but I could have just selected the option they wanted, taken the picture, and then swapped back to the candidate I wanted. Is there something I'm missing here? Any way you slice it, even if the current system allows coercion, if we're talking about cryptographic voting systems, we might as well use ones that don't suffer the same issue. > your scenario is not observed in the wild, since it is illegal. I don't mean to be snide, but I've witnessed a great deal of illegal things, so "since it is illegal" is not that convincing. Even if you discount the threat of violence because of the possibility of police intervention (e.g. you report being threatened), consider the notion of vote buying: a rich person just says they'll pay you lots of money to vote for them. This isn't necessarily something people would want to report, given the possibility of financial benefit, especially if the person is down on their luck. At any rate, if electoral fraud is something that is "not observed in the wild", people sure do make a big fuss over it (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud for some references).
- jellicle 13y agoYou perhaps are not aware of absentee voting.
- ReidZB 13y agoAh! Of course. You're right. I've never used an absentee ballot, so it completely slipped my mind. This is actually why Helios voting (which is end-to-end auditable) doesn't prevent coercion either: your voting is done 'at range' (online), so a coercer can just stand over your shoulder. Just about the only surefire way to prevent coercion is to somehow physically give someone security while voting. Okay, well, anyway, my point still stands; even if coercion is possible in the current-day low-tech system, if we're going to discuss a cryptographic replacement, we might as well restrict ourselves to the baseline "best-studied" ones so far, virtually all of which include coercion-defeating mechanisms. At a minimum, if a physical presence were the norm with cryptographic voting and there was an option to be absent (like today), then we would be in an identical scenario with regard to coercion while gaining the end-to-end auditability of the cryptographic scheme. It seems like a net positive, although many critics of cryptographic voting see the increase in complexity as unworkable.
- davidw 13y agoActually, people can and do sell votes this way in places in Italy. How they do so is extensively documented. It's one of the reasons that cameras are supposed to be strictly forbidden in voting booths - so they can't take a picture verifying how they voted.
- benihana 13y ago>it allows extortion/coercion. Suppose I am a mob boss and I wish to become (insert position here). I send my goons to inform you that voting for me is a wise decision because I can offer you protection from the vicious thugs in the area. It would be a shame if the vicious thugs burned your house down, wouldn't it? How is this different than what currently happens?
- NickSharp 13y agoOur current voting system has an emphasis on the secret ballot. There are records of which polling place a person voted at, and whether they showed up to vote, but (in theory) there's no way to tell which of the thousands of ballots from that polling place match to which individual voter.
- lukifer 13y agoI think there is a simple way to counter-act vote buying/coercion: if the voter has a mechanism to cheat the cheater. If I can accept a hundred bucks to vote A, then walk around the corner and change my vote to B in secret, it creates sufficient disincentive to buy or coerce votes.
- brazzy 13y agoYou mean, exactly like the system we use in the real world?