On Friday 31 October 2003 12:10 pm, Major Variola (ret) wrote:Is is possible to use blinding (or other protocols) so that all votes are published, you can check that your vote is in there, and you (or anyone) can run the maths and verify the vote? Without being able to link people to votes without their consent.
Doing this would allow vote buyers to verify a voter voted the way they
wanted.
That is one of the main reasons you can't take a copy of your paper ballot
home with you now.
One option might be to give the voter a MAC of their ballot and then print the
MAC's in the paper. The voter could check to see if their vote had been
altered.
I still think far better methods for improving voter turn out other than
Internet voting are:
1. A National Election Holiday (but in the middle of the work week so people
can't use it to extend a vacation).
2. Couple the Election with a National Lottery with local, state, and national
prizes. With appropriate delink of voter's identity from the way they voted
of course.
(I'm not claiming that this would actually improve things overall, just increase voter turnout).
Increasing voter turnout is, of course, a Bad Thing. For the reasons we discuss so often.
Mandating a National Election Holiday is, of course, statist and unconstitutional. If Employer Alice negotiates with Employee Bob that he work on a particular day, he works on that particular day. Government cannot interfere.
(Or if they try to, those involved have earned a loaded 747 flown into their building.)
And, practically, elections come at various times during the year in different states, with sometimes several elections in a year. Can't have a "mandated holiday" for each, right?
Further, even on mandated holidays, _some_ people must work just to keep the machinery going. Examples are legion, from cops to oil refinery workers to election place employees. What, are these people especially disenfranchised by having to work while employees of Intel and Apple are told the State has decreed they get to skip work? (Won't even work for Intel, as the wafer fabs run 24/7 and _cannot_ be shut down....don't know about Apple's situation.)
When the fuck will people stop proposing statist solutions?
Or should we just add 20 of the remaining 30 list subscribers here to the list of 25 million in these united states who need to be sent up the chimneys? Works for me.
--Tim May
