[EM] danger of coercion (Re: First U.S. Scientific Election Audit...)

[Juho]

On May 19, 2007, at 23:10 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> It's not the *printing* that is expensive. It is collating them.  
> You have to produce sets of ballots that have no duplications, so  
> that every voter gets one and only one copy of each ballot.

Another approach is to allow voters to take a second ballot if they  
somehow spoil the first one. Only one of the ballots will be  
returned, and stamped when returned.

> registrations

I have understood that in US one can be denied the right to vote if  
one has not registered. If you are interested in guaranteeing the  
potential candidates the ability to register at the last minute or  
never, maybe you are also interested in guaranteeing voters the right  
to vote.

> Anyway, the *big* problem is not voter fraud, nor is it vote  
> coercion, nor is it vote buying, it is fraud in how the election is  
> conducted and how the ballots are handled and counted. With the  
> suggestion of paper ballots and public imaging, I'm directly  
> addressing two aspects of the problem, definitively and simply:

Your methods seem to provide some additional possibilities to check  
the results. Pretty good results can be achieved also by all relevant  
parties being present at the initial vote count (on the spot, right  
after the election ends), writing in their note books how many votes  
each party/candidate got, and then later in the evening checking that  
the numbers of their region are right in TV and Internet.

> The *present* rules are enough!

Right, in places/elections where there are no problems (with  
coercion), changes are probably not required.

>>> Juho, nothing was suggested about collecting private information.
>>
>> Ok, my words exaggerated a bit, but the point is that risk of losing
>> privacy grows when larger amounts of person related data is linked
>> together.
>
> But votes are not personally related data. They are *generated* by  
> a person, but in a very narrow context, and, normally, there is  
> nothing about a vote pattern that would reveal who a person is,  
> unless the person has some very rare combination of positions *and  
> you already know what they are*.

The first emerging problems are maybe related to coercion. If there  
are 10 boxes to tick and you can tick freely any of them then there  
are 1024 different voting patterns. If the coercer tells you how you  
should vote (maybe an unusual pattern), it could be a too big risk  
for you not to vote as told (assuming that the coercer will see the  
votes and can see if none of them is as "agreed").

Another more difficult case. I know that you are a democrat and you  
have spoken in favour of X and against Y. This may be sufficient to  
limit the number of ballots that could be your ballot to a small  
number of ballots. If all (credible ones) of those have marked Z then  
I'll know that you also voted Z. (I know in small places there are  
people who know pretty well the opinions of all the local people and  
are therefore able to make the mapping quite well.)

Juho




		
___________________________________________________________ 
Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html