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A Secure and Verifiable Voting System
meese writes "The cryptographer David Chaum, through discussion with top cryptographers such as Ron Rivest, has designed a secure and verifiable voting system. One of the goals of his design is that anyone can verify that votes were tabulated correctly. It's good to see real security/crypto people working on this problem. They also have a press release."
Most lay people assume the voting system is secure simply by virtue of it being computerized.
I haven't looked at the spec for this yet, but I have to believe that this cannot be the answer, simply because most people won't be able to understand how this system is any different than the (electronic) one it replaces.
More than anything else, voters have to be able to trust that their vote is being counted. And there will always be talk of powerful interests being given backdoors or being able to skew the results using exotic technologies like quantum cryptoanalysis.
The only sure way of a) having a legitimate election where b) everyone can know their vote was counted is by c) publishing all the votes.
Publish the votes. No batteries (cryptographic or otherwise) required.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
It's not as simple as that. To prevent vote-selling, it can't be possible to someone to walk out the door with proof that they voted for a certain person. The press release gets further into these details; describing a convoluted two-piece receipt system.
I like the idea of being about to verify that my vote counted, but how will everyone being able to verify their vote stop dead people from voting?
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The proposal allows a VOTER to verify that their vote was properly cast and recorded.
There is no protection for a candidate.
With physical ballots, a candidate can ask for a recount of those ballots.
As far as I can see, under this proposed system, you either accept the word of the computer, or you try and round up the anonymous (out-of-district or out of state) voters and ask them to please check their ballots.
Snowball I can vote with impunity. Indeed I can add as many votes to the machine record as I want - I can have the machine churning out thousands of votes per hour, shred both copies, and just make sure the legitimate votes are also included in the tally.
The proposal address completeness (all votes are recorded), accuracy (the votes are correctly recorded, or can be verified as having been so) BUT only by the voter - NOT the candidate who has to trust the machine or hope a voter picks up a fault.
Validity (only proper votes are cast) is not addressed. Unless I'm missing something.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I never cease to be amazed at what is considered insightful on this forum.
The *process* is very simple and completely automatic.
The *reason* it works is *slightly* more complex, but is considerably easier to understand than, say, public key cryptography. This is not rocket science.
Properties of the system:
- it allows each voter to verify that their vote has been recorded;
- it does not allow a voter, or anybody else involved, to prove which way they voted (i.e. voter anonymity is preserved throughout);
- it includes an (automatic) auditing scheme that provides statistical near certainty (in the absence of *complete* collusion by the authorities) of detecting fifty or more instances of ballot rigging.
It's elegant and simple and very easy to verify. Evidently, alas, the paper does not make this clear to everyone...