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

[Jan Kok]

On 10/1/06, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> At 08:49 PM 10/1/2006, Ka-Ping Yee wrote:
> >I'm talking about "marking the ballot" by filling in bubbles, not
> >by scribbling on it.  There may be enough down-ballot contests in
> >many elections (at least in the U. S.) that the vote-buyer could
> >instruct a voter to create a distinct pattern of filled bubbles in
> >down-ballot contests.
>
> (1) complex. people who sell their votes are ... not the brightest
> bulbs in the pack. After all, the vote buyers obviously believe that
> the votes are worth more than they are paying! (enough more to be
> worth the legal risk). Vote-buying may shift close elections; but,
> frankly, I think it is rare. Very rare. Except of course, for the
> most blatant vote-buying of all: "Vote for me, I'll cut your taxes."
> or the alternate: "Vote for me, I'll increase social benefits." Or,
> of course, both at the same time, which seems to be what most
> politicians aim at.
>
> (2) not all that easy. Yes, a vote-buyer could design some
> distinctive pattern, or even a few of them. But this would allow the
> buyer to only validate a few votes. Presumably the buyer is buying
> more than a few votes. So how does the buyer know which votes came
> from the seller? Designing a pattern that can be varied sufficiently
> to identify a large number of voters would take a *lot* of
> contests.... And, of course, unless the vote-buyer were only
> interested in a single contest, all that variation would have
> undesired results.

This can be alleviated by putting different contests on different ballots.

There is still the possibility of mischief if there are many
candidates in a contest.

With Range Voting, each _candidate_ can be put on a separate ballot.

Range Voting ballots can be made simpler (and make it more difficult
for voters to identify their ballots) by reducing the number of
rating-choices available. For example, is anyone going to be upset
that they can't give some candidate a 53? The choices 0, 10, ...90, 99
or 100 should be sufficient, with I think one exception: I would like
to vote max-1 for second choice and lesser-evil candidates. (It's
symbolic, and also can be used for distinguishing non-favorites from
favorites for allocating public campaign funds.)

Of course, there is the whole OTHER problem of mail-in ballots - a
much bigger problem from the standpoint of vote buying/coersion, as
well as ballots for certain precincts "accidentally" getting delayed
or lost in the mail.

Cheers,
- Jan