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Long answer....
Matt Crawford wrote:
>
> It looks as if your VERIFIABILITY constraints allow pay-for-vote to
> take place. The voter V can show his audit number to ward-heeler W,
> who can subsequently verify, together with poll-watcher P, that V
> voted for Boss B.
Maybe you meant "clerk", not "poll-watcher".
There has to be some sort of indication that you've voted, to prevent
multiple voting. Granted?
A poll-watcher would only know the same audit-number -- but they
already know that. When the clerk writes your name into a poll book,
or (in other places) writes a poll-number next to your name on the
printout, a poll-watcher knows when you came in, and what order you
voted. Think of it as traffic analysis.
However, to learn the vote requires the assistance of the clerk,
revealing the ballot itself. To prevent those kind of shenanigans,
all parties have poll-watchers.... (In practice, we have problems
finding enough volunteers, so we place them in tactical locations.)
It _IS_ true that virtually all vote fraud is conducted by clerks.
That's why you have to have the audit numbers. So that someone can
catch the clerks (after the fact).
Good paper ballot systems use the same form of indirection. The poll
number is written on the serial tab that is removed from the ballot
when the ballot is placed in the box/machine.
There are existing systems that don't have the audit number. In
Ingham County, Michigan, last year, the punch cards didn't have a
serial number. During the recount, ballot boxes in primarily
Democratic precincts (Michigan State University) "miraculously" had
more ballots than the number of folks that voted. Entire precincts
were thrown out! The Republican won the recount by less than 100
votes, when the Democrat should have won by several thousand.
All you have to do is throw a blank ballot or two in the box while
nobody is looking. That's why you have to serialize the ballots, so
that spurious ballots can be removed/ignored.
> The PRIVACY section does not seem strong enough to
> prevent this.
>
Dunno what to do (in a law) other than outlaw the behaviour, ensure
that the clerk has a strong probability of being caught, and a stiff
enough penalty to provide deterrence.
Any other ideas?
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