Anon makes two good points which I admit I did not think of. I did

mention several ways that secrecy could be enhanced, but I do admit

that that was not my main thrust. However, I believe that the certain

large benefit of a verifiable and honestly counted ballot out weights

the smaller less probably downsides. In the real world, I admit some

workers could be coerced by their boss. I don't have a good answer for

that; but I don't think it does happen enough to be the deciding

factor. However, the problem of paying for votes is illegal already.

A few sting operations and the resulting notoriety would give any

political great pause.

"Having anything like a serial number that could be tied to a voter's

identity (eg. poll-worker writes down which ballot serial number was

given to which person as they're handing out ballots) is bad for the

same reason, it potentially allows an outsider to determine how a

particular person voted." ... I addressed this problem in a footnote

with a randomly selected serial numbers from a block of

numbers. Counted and published results would then be numerically sorted.

"I'd require printed ballots, but I'd make sure they didn't have

anything on them that could be tied back to the voter's identity and

that they went into a ballot box not home with the vote"... But this

would make it impossible for me to know that *my* vote was correctly

counted and would make my challenge impossible.

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11336/32625#32625