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

[Ka-Ping Yee]

On Mon, 2 Oct 2006, Warren Smith wrote:
> Somebody needs to waterboard Rivest until he sees the light, which
> is that his method works synergistically with range and approval voting.
> (I don't even think the WORDS "approval voting" even OCCUR in Rivest's
> paper, even the revised one, which shows you how far into the land of
> the loony Rivest is drifting in his efforts to ignore the obvious.

The latest draft of the paper i've seen is dated October 1.  Have
you seen it?  It does talk about range and approval voting.  He also
acknowledges you by name for making helpful comments about the paper.

> >>WDS: 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.
>
> >KPY: I don't see how that would be possible.  How would a vote-buyer be
> >able to buy votes in an "averaged statistical sense"?  Could you
> >describe this vote-buying process in more detail?
>
> --trivial.  I just say to you: "show me your ballot copy when you come out
> of the polls.  If it votes for Clinton, I'll give you $1."  With your
> foolish randomization nonsense which totally breaks 3ballot, if you vote
> Clinton, then 2/3 chance you get a dollar; if you vote not-Clinton,
> then 1/3 chance.

I think we may be talking about different schemes here.  The voter gets
to choose which of the three ballots to copy and take home.  So if you
offer me $1 for a vote for Clinton, i can always choose a ballot with
a mark for Clinton regardless of how i actually voted.

I'm talking about randomizing which 1 or 2 out of the 3 bubbles get
marked, not which ballot the voter takes home.  The most appealing idea
to me for doing this, so far, is to have the ballots pre-printed with 1
out of every 3 pre-filled.  That way the voter doesn't have to do a lot of
extra work -- they just fill one bubble next to each preferred candidate,
which is easy to understand.  And if the pre-filling pattern is not
predictable, then the "three-pattern attack" is also prevented.


-- ?!ng