[EM] 3ballot - revolutionary new protocol for secure secret ballot elections

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

  Warren Smith wds at math.temple.edu wrote:
 > [The specified pattern] attack appears to be quite devastating to me.
 > I personally regard Rivest's scheme as therefore dead or anyway on the critical list,
 > for purpose of applying it to plurality voting. Rivest has a few lame attempts
 > to rescusitate it, but they do not impress me much. However, for approval & range voting,
 > this attack (in the de-bundled world of course) is not an attack at all. It
 > is nothing. So Rivest's idea is strong and healthy for range & approval voting.
 
 One solution would be to cut the ballot after/during casting.
 
 The 35 person ballot would be kept together until after it has been validated for
 correct marking. After that it can be split into say 7 5-person ballots or something.
 
 There would need to be an ID on each ballot for each set of 5 candidates. The voter
 would effectively get 7 receipts in the above example.
 
 What is still needed is a way to prevent the voter from knowing the ID of votes that
 are cast that he doesn't get a receipt for. Otherwise, the "buyer" can demand the
 list of ID numbers.
 
 Also, if the ballot is split into 35 parts, then this is equivalent in complexity
 (and number of receipts) to using approval or range.
 
 > >A u-R Lomax:
 > Vote-buying may shift close elections; but,
 > frankly, I think it is rare. very rare.
 >
 > --Well, that is not clear. May be rare here & now, but historically it has at the right
 > times and places been not rare, but "the norm." Read LBJ biography & Gumbel book if you
 > want to learn about that. Also in the right kind of country, it (or coercion) may be common or
 > an easy way to slide into non-democracy.
 
 I guess the issue is that it might be rare because the voting system (tries
 to) guard against it.
 
 The benefit for secret ballots is that if voters have a better than 50% chance of
 being correct on a question, then asking lots of them will likely give the right
 answer. If people can sell their votes, this law of large number effect is
 reduced. This is in addition to the issue of coercion.
 
 > STENCILS:
 > --One more thing. Raphfrk on this forum suggested some
 > ideas about sliding widgets and 3ballot.
 > I thought his stuff (assuming raphfrk is a "him") was rather kludgy and confused
 > and I wasn't even sure it would work
 
 It would :). The main issue is getting ID numbers to work, without showing the
 voter the ID for ballots that are not in the copy slot.
 
 Btw, a mechanical system that people can see operating is a hell of alot easier for
 people to understand than a list of instructions. Using the suggested system,
 it would be impossible to cast an illegal vote.
 
 > , BUT, it had the germ of a very good idea.
 > Which I call "STENCILS."
 
 I think that the two systems can be combined. You put the ballot in a slot. There
 is one hole over each candidate's name. You use the handle to move a slider to
 cover one hold for each candidate. There is also a "voting" handle which you use
 to cover an empty hole for the candidate that you want to vote for.
 
 >
 > I have some optimism Rivest will see the light and realize he"s come up with
 > a great reason to prefer range & approval voting, and he ought to at least
 > mention AV in his paper, for heaven's sake.
 >
 
 I don't think ease of securing the vote should be that high on the list of
 priorities, when evaluating an election method. 
 
 OTOH, implementation details are for example, the main reason to support
 approval over range. (as range allows people to cast approval votes if they 
 wish), as approval is simplier.
 
 Also, implementation details are why asset voting is potentially superior
 to PR-STV as the counting can be decoupled from the distribution.
 
    Raphfrk
 --------------------
 Interesting site
 "what if anyone could modify the laws"
 
 www.wikocracy.com
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