[EM] Establishing an offline foundation for secure online voting

[Bryan Alexander Ford]

I just posted the following short (1900-word) article that might be of interest
here, although it is not about how to cast and count ballots but rather about
how we might enforce the "one person, one vote" principle in online
deliberative forums and prevent ballot stuffing while protecting users' privacy
and anonymity.

  Sybil Parties: An Offline Foundation for Online Accountability
  http://www.brynosaurus.com/log/2006/0924-SybilParties.html

In short, the only way to have legitimate online deliberation without the risk
of people creating many virtual online personas with which to stuff ballot
boxes (sybil attacks) is to create some form of strong "one person, one
persona" relationship between real users offline and their personas online.
The only I see way to do this, in turn, without requiring everybody to use
government-issued ID for everything or sign on to a massive centralized PKI
scheme that destroys everyone's privacy rights is... well, read the article if
it's not obvious already. :)  Feedback welcome of course.

Thanks,
Bryan