Yeoh Yiu wrote: > > Ed Gerck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > The 'second law' also takes precedence: ballots are always secret, only > > vote totals are known and are known only after the election ends. > > You get totals per nation, per state, per county, per riding, > per precinct, per polling stion and maybe per ballot box.
The lowest possible totals are per race, per ballot box. The 'second law' allows you to have such totals -- which are the election results for that race in that ballot box. For example, if there are two candidates (X and Y) in race A , two candidates (Z and W) in race B, and only one vote per candidate is allowed in each race, the election results for ballot box K might be: Vote totals for race A in ballot box K: Votes for candidate X: 5 Votes for candidate Y: 60 Blank votes: 50 Vote totals for race B in ballot box K: Votes for candidate Z: 45 Votes for candidate W: 50 Blank votes: 20 Total ballots in ballot box K: 115 Because only the vote totals are known for each race, a voter cannot be identified by recognizing a pre-defined, unlikely voting pattern in each race of a ballot. This exemplifies one reason why we need the 'second law' -- to preserve unlinkability between ballots and voters. > So there's a need to design the system to have more voters > than ballot boxes to conform to your second law. No. All you need is that there should be more than one voter per ballot box. This is a rather trivial requirement to meet. Cheers, Ed Gerck --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]