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

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

 Warren D Smith 

> --Australia makes rank ordering all candidates on all races,

> compulsory for every voter

> (and voting also is compulsory).  So it can be done.In fairness, the Australian system is not very fair. It basically 
 collapses to the closed party list system as people are given
 a choice. Make one mark for the party list or make 50+ for
 indicating their preferences directly. Now, if they had it
 so that you could mark 2-3 ranks directly and then pick
 a party list, that would be better.
 
 ---
 
 On the system itself:
 
 I had another thought of how to do the 3-ballot for plurality. The 
 3 ballots are placed in a machine. At each choice there is a slider
 that can be in one of 3 places. This slider can be placed so it covers
 one candidate's name on one of the 3 ballots.
 
 There is a second slider "layer" that can be used to cover any name on
 any one of the ballots.
 
 
 
 Something like:
 
 +---+ +---+  +---+ +---+
 | 1 | | 1 | | 2 | | 3 |
 | | | |  | | | |
 | A | | A |  | A | |XXXXXXXXX
 | | | |  | | | | +---------------- (handle)
 | | | |  | | | |
 | B | | B |  |XXXXXXXXX | C |
 | | | |  | | +----------------------- (handle)
 | | | |  | | | |
 |YYYYYYYYY--+ | C | |XXXXXXXXX
 | | | |  | | | | | +---------------- (handle)
 | | | |  | | | | |
 +---+ +---+  | +---+ +---+
 |
 | 
 (handle)
 
 
 The sliders would be behind glass. There would be 3 vote slots and 1
 receipt slot. The voter would place 1 ballot in each of the vote slots
 and the receipt slot. (for added security, it might be worth having 3
 receipt slots)
   
 The voter would be told to set the XXXX handles at random. This
 ensures that there is one vote cast for each candidate. The XXXX
 handles can only move horizontally.
 
 The YYYYY handle can move up and down and left and right. The 
 voter would be told to cover one of the uncovered slots for the
 candidate they want to vote for.
 
 After that is done, they press a button. Assuming that the handles
 are in "locked" positions, this applies ink to the ballots. The sliders 
 prevent parts of each of the ballots being marked. Also, the sliders 
 cover the receipt that is in the slot next to ballot that is being copied. 
 This automatically means that the ballot and receipt matches.
 
 This seems to make it as simple to use as possible. "Set the
 horizontal sliders at random and cover the name of the 
 candidate you support with the vertical handle".
 
 The only slight thing is that a mark is not counted as a +1
 vote. Leaving the ballot blank is what counts as a +1 vote.
 A mark is the 0 vote.
 
 There would also need to be something similar for handling
 the numbering of the receipt. Maybe the voter can pick their
 own ID numbers in the same way. Also, they should 
 probably be provided with a die as people aren't that good
 at picking random numbers.
 
 Obviously, the voters would be told to leave the handles
 in the "default" state when finished with them.
 
 
  Raphfrk
 --------------------
 Interesting site
 "what if anyone could modify the laws"
 
 www.wikocracy.com   
 -----Original Message-----
 From: wds at math.temple.edu
 To: wds at math.temple.edu; election-methods at zesty.ca
 Cc: election-methods at electorama.com
 Sent: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 5:14 AM
 Subject: Re: [EM] 3ballot - revolutionary new protocol for secure secret ballot elections
 
  > Ka-Ping Yee
> discussion of 3ballot at http://usablesecurity.com/

RESPONSE BY :
>How hard would it be to get voters to properly mark three ballots (or
a perforated ballot with three separable columns)?  The instructions
are simple — mark one or two in each row — but it may not be so easy
to convince voters why they should do this.  I'm not convinced that
we'd be able to get voters to put a mark next to a candidate they want
to vote against.  I don't know for sure; maybe we would, but it's not
immediately obvious to me.  Pollworkers would probably be busy
answering lots of questions.

--true... definitely a worry.

>The bigger problem, it seems to me, would be convincing voters to
mark one out of three for every unselected option on the ballot.  A
San Francisco voter who just wants to cast a vote for Governor and
ignore the other contests would have to fill in over 100 bubbles
instead of just one.  (This fall, there will be over 20 offices and 24
propositions on the ballot in San Francisco.) I'd like to be less
cynical about the behaviour of typical voters, but I'm inclined to
think it will be even harder to get voters to do something really
inconvenient than to do something they don't fully understand.  The
inconvenience might be the real killer obstacle here.--true..
definitely a worry.





>Since the voter only gets to see the ID number on the ballot they
chose to take home, but not on the other two ballots, that makes it
harder to identify the other ballots — but it might not be impossible.
 A vote-buyer might demand that the voter mark all three of the
ballots in a specific way, and then the pattern of marks might be
distinguishable, depending on how the rest of the voters behave.

--well, the govt will post on the bulletin board, not IMAGES of the ballot,
but merely an electronic record of the CONTENT of the ballots.
(The govt cannot cheat here, of course, without detection.)
So, no, this attack by you fails...  unless the vote-buyer *is* the govt...
(or in very close collusion with it)...   but if that were the case, then
the govt could, more simply, just not implement the 3ballot protocol in
the first place.

>If most voters vote uniformly (for example, always marking either the
first ballot or the first two ballots), then a specific pattern of
three ballots would stand out from the crowd.

--it is very risky for an evil govt to try to cheat based on such
statistical patterns.
YES that will work to get a higher cheat-success rate, but no, large cheating
will still be impossible without detection.

>The coercion prevention of ThreeBallot depends on the voters to
randomize how they distribute their marks among the three ballots...
Let's consider now a possible alternative...
how about a machine that marks the ballot for them?...
However, now we have a new problem: the ballot-marking machine becomes
responsible for randomly distributing the marks among the three
ballots.  If the distribution is not random, then the voter becomes
vulnerable to coercion.

--That's all totally wrong thinking.  If all voters did that, then a
Dem voter would on all
three ballots show (usually) a pro-Dem bias, and then his vote could
be reliably (in an averaged statistical sense) be bought by a Dem-Boss
vote buyer.
If you actually had a machine auto-randomizing the choices like that,
then you'd totally blow it and totally lose out on the benefits of
Rivest's scheme
for preventing vote buying.

--
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement
----
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