[EM] secret ballots and proxy voting

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Bayle,

a second clarification.
The voter can split his/her vote to several "vote streams" which are
similar or identical.
Then the vote buying and selling becomes much more complicated, since the
votes are split.

Best regards
Peter Zborník



2013/4/8 Peter Zbornik <pzbornik at gmail.com>

> Dear Bayle,
>
> to clarify, the voters pick their proxy based on his/her voting record,
> but don't actually know who, specifically is voting.
> The voters just have a "vote stream".
> The voter should in any case have the power to change the vote, if the
> proxy votes differently, than the voter would like.
> In order to de-motivate the proxy from selling his/her vote to the Mafia,
> he/she should not know how many votes she/he has.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
>
>
> 2013/4/8 Peter Zbornik <pzbornik at gmail.com>
>
>> Dear Bayle,
>>
>> your proposed square-root solution violates the principle of "one person,
>> one vote, one value", as votes have different weights.
>>
>> A better solution to the Mafia problem in proxy voting is to have public
>> voting but secret voters and proxies.
>> This solution has the positive side-effect of focusing the debate on
>> issues and not on people.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Peter Zborník
>>
>> Dne pondělí, 8. dubna 2013, Bayle Shanks <bshanks3 at gmail.com> napsal(a):
>>
>> >
>> > Typically when large numbers of people are voting you'd like to have
>> > secret ballots so that the Mafia can't buy votes or intimidate people
>> > and also so that people feel free to make unpopular choices.
>> >
>> > However, when the people voting are representing others, you often
>> > want to publish who voted for what so that the constituents can use
>> > the past voting records of their representatives to decide whether to
>> > vote for them in future elections.
>> >
>> > In a proxy voting system, where voters can allow other voters to vote
>> > for them 'by proxy', and particularly in a transitive proxy voting
>> > system, where the proxies can be re-proxied (e.g. Alice can give a
>> > proxy to Bob who can give both Alice's proxy and his own to Caroline),
>> > you want to satisfy both these objectives.
>> >
>> > You want everyone's vote to be secret, because you don't want the
>> > Mafia to intimidate them or buy their votes, and you want unpopular
>> > outcomes to be feasible.
>> >
>> > But you also want everyone's votes to be
>> > public, because you don't want to give your proxy to someone who says
>> > they'll do one thing with your proxy and then actually does another,
>> > without you ever knowing.
>> >
>> > One fear is that the Mafia will say, 'You'd better give me your proxy
>> > or you'll be punished'. I think you can probably fix that by not
>> > giving proxy holders very precise information on how many proxies they
>> > hold, when they were given, or who gave them.
>> >
>> > Even if each person casts their own vote secretly, but can see which
>> > way their own proxied vote was vast, the Mafia just has to
>> > secretly ally with a small number of proxy givers in order to see
>> > which way the proxied votes are being cast (note that even if the
>> > system let the vote caster know whose proxies they hold, they
>> > don't know which proxy-ers are allied with the mafia).
>> >
>> > One idea is just to say, if you accept proxies your votes are
>> > public, otherwise they are secret. This essentially reduces the
>> > transitive proxy system to ordinary voting however because
>> > it provides no way to have proxy holders who can cast proxied votes in
>> > a way that the Mafia can't control.
>> >
>> > Here's an idea I had to deal with this problem.
>> >
>> > Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot.
>> >
>> > Everyone can see which way they vote their public ballot. If they hold
>> > proxies from others, the proxies' secret ballots follow their secret
>> > ballot and the proxies' public ballots follow their public ballot. The
>> > originators of the proxies don't ever find out which way their secret
>> > ballots were cast.
>> >
>> > To tally the vote, for each candidate, you sum the secret ballots for
>> > that candidate, then you sum the public ballots for that candidate,
>> > then you multiply these two sums together, then you take the square
>> > root.
>> >
>> > After transforming sums in this manner, you can use most existing
>> > voting methods to determine the winner.
>> >
>> > For instance, if there are five voters and two candidates, and they
>> > vote like this:
>> >
>> > PUBLIC BALLOT
>> >       CANDIDATE
>> > VOTER    A       B
>> > 1       1        0
>> > 2       1        0
>> > 3       1        0
>> > 4       0        1
>> > 5       0        1
>> >
>> > SECRET BALLOT
>> >       CANDIDATE
>> > VOTER    A       B
>> > 1        1       0
>> > 2        0       1
>> > 3        0       1
>> > 4        0       1
>> > 5        0       1
>> >
>> > then the public ballot tally for A is 3, the secret ballot tally for A
>> > is 1, the public ballot tally for B is 2, the secret ballot tally for
>> > B is 4; the combined tally for A is sqrt(3 + 1) = 2, the combined
>> > tally for B is sqrt(2 + 4) = 2.45.
>> >
>> >
>> > Virtues:
>> > * you can use your secret ballot to express your true preference
>> > * however, if you care about influencing the election, you can have
>> > the most impact if your secret ballot matches your public ballot. So
>> > there is at least some incentive not to lie about what you plan to do
>> > if you accumulate proxies.
>> >
>> > I expect that what would happen is that the Mafia would
>> > be limited to corrupting public ballots (and people lying about what
>> > they are doing with their proxies to attract proxies from the
>> > opposition party would be limited to corrupting secret
>> > proxied ballots). If the Mafia can only reach a subpopulation of
>> > voters, then that subpopulation will effectively have less weight,
>> > because the multiplication of the public and the secret tallies
>> > effectively downweights voters who cast their public and secret
>> > ballots differently.
>> >
>> > A slightly different approach would be to provide only public ballots,
>> > but in addition a way for each person to secretly submit a request to
>> > ignore their public ballot while counting votes. So now the Mafia can
>> > effectively prevent you from voting but they can't do anything more.
>> > You'd have to find a way to implement this so that the Mafia can't use
>> > the same information that allows the vote-counters to match ballots to
>> > ignore requests to find out how you voted, however.
>> >
>> > Thoughts? Other solutions?
>> >
>> > thanks,
>> >   bayle
>> >
>> > ----
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>> info
>>  >a
>>
>
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