I won't respond to all of the following, but what I have to say was prompted by the message > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Abd ul-Rahman Lomax > Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 2:33 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: election-methods@electorama.com > Subject: Re: [EM] A quick, dirty, and somewhat obvious method > for a secret proxy ballot > > At 04:14 AM 11/16/2005, Scott Ritchie wrote: > >On Sun, 2005-11-13 at 19:28 -0500, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > > > The obstacle is the tradition of secret ballot, > considered necessary > > > to safeguard against coercion. However, it is my > suspicion that the > > > dangers of open voting in a society functioning with rule > of law are > > > drastically overstated, and, indeed, the use of secret ballot may > > > allow more abuse than it prevents. > > > >It is entirely simply to have a secret ballot by delegable proxy - > >simply keep the fact that someone is a proxy a secret! It does, > >however, require some level of trust in a software counting program. > ... remainder snipped.
It may be we're making this too complicated, but as a somewhat educated layman with respect to EMs and a very interested voter, I notice these important points. 1) MY vote as an individual voter MUST be by secret ballot. I have very recent experience with just the knowledge of which primary I voted in being used to strike me from the voting rolls for the general election. There's "coercion" and many more forms of dis-enfranchisement. If I were to vote for a proxy, I'd want which proxy I voted for kept secret. 2) But the votes BY the proxy MUST be be "public" - at least to the ones who delegated their vote to them. The reason? If I delegate X as a proxy, it is because I voted for "X's proposed ballot configuration". If X's actual ballot is not available for my review, then if my alternative loses the election I have no way of knowing if it was because a majority didn't like it, or my proxy was lying when she said she would vote my preference. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info