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Verifiable Elections Via Cryptography
An anonymous reader writes, "Cryptographer David Chaum and his research team have invented a new voting protocol which allows voters to verify that their vote has been correctly cast and counted. This is enabled using a surprisingly low-tech technique of cryptographic secret sharing. The secret — your marked ballot — is split into two halves using a hole punch" You take half home and can verify later via a Web interface how your particular ballot was counted.
One goal of the modern election regime is to prevent vote-buying and similar kinds of fraud. One of the best safeguards to prevent it is by making it impossible to prove to anyone which way you voted after you leave the poll; that way, if someone tries to buy your vote, you can take his money and, vote your conscience, and he'll never know the difference. With this method, the vote-buyer could collect cryptographic stubs for verification before disbursing payment. That's why so many states have restrictions on who can cast absentee ballots: so you can't prove to the vote-buyer which way your vote was cast.