the point of anonymous voting is coercion. if you can validate your vote outside of a safe polling place then someone else is able to validate how you voted and force you to vote a particular way
voting systems you need to be able to validate that your vote is submitted as you wanted (imo only paper based voting allows for this), and then that the system for counting the votes is inviolable (that’s where scrutineers come in)… again, imo that’s not something you can do electronically - or at least practically
Can’t we be coerced to get in our car, drive to a polling place, and vote for a particular candidate? Blackmail, other threats, or financial incentives etc, I’m not sure why a physical polling place is safer than being able to vote anonymously
No matter who threatens you, they can’t see what’s on the paper ballot you put in a box. There’s people at the polling station that ensure that.
If there’s any way of tracking your vote, someone could threaten you, force you to vote a certain way, then force you to show the verification afterwards.
The safest way to ensure everyone gets a fair vote is paper ballots in a box.
I know the US uses a lot of mail-in voting, and that you generally deem it to be secure. I also understand that the US is a far less densely populated country than my own, which makes mail-in voting more necessary. However, we don’t have that in my country, and the reason I’m glad for it is exactly this: There’s no truly effective way to prevent anyone from forcing someone else to mail in a specific vote.
In your home, someone could force themselves in, force you to vote for someone and verify you did so.
With anonymous voting at a polling place, sure someone could force you to go there, but since the vote itself is anonymous (and there’s people around to check it is), they would never be able to verify that you indeed voted X or Y way. It’s also why most countries ban taking pictures of your vote; no proving to anyone how you voted!
Your examples are still the same. Polling places which require you to fill out your ballot by hand verify that you voted for someone because you can be watched or recorded as you were filling it out.
I’m not trying to be antagonistic. I literally just don’t see the difference.
because you can be watched or recorded as you were filling it out
You expressly can’t do this. This is why there’s a voting booth and observers who make sure you’re alone in the booth. And after you fill out the ballot, it gets folded inward and placed in a box that is closed off until election day is over. There’s no way to verify who you voted for, as your name isn’t on the ballot.
worth noting here that this is verification that your vote was submitted as you want it. from here, the system protects the integrity of the vote. interested parties (usually the major political parties) can organise scrutineers to follow the boxes from polling places to counting centres to ensure the boxes aren’t tampered with (along with seals and other physical security features). from there, people - multiple per vote - read and tally the big pile of votes… scrutineers here validate that the count is being conducted correctly (again, these are usually from any major party so anyone with something to gain or loose all agree on every single ballot that is counted). generally, if scrutineers disagree about a ballot it gets held for further processing of some kind
in these systems, it ensures integrity because the individual can ensure their vote is for sure cast how they want, and then anyone is able to validate the integrity of the count and process itself. there’s no place where this system can be measurably subverted (small scale fraud is pretty rare because it’s really not worth doing. large scale fraud is basically impossible to achieve without completely subverting an entire step in the process across the entire country, which is absolutely going to be noticed)
Could this be done such that a person cannot prove that they voted a certain way (the source of the problems people mention, like vote selling becoming viable)?
Maybe with a schema that allows a one time verify, and then churns your entry. If that verify occurs upon entry synchronously at the time you vote, if possible, that’d be no less safe than the paper ballot you feed into the machine.
This is the exact use-case for a blockchain, a public immutable ledger where you can validate your vote, but nobody can tie it back to you.
the point of anonymous voting is coercion. if you can validate your vote outside of a safe polling place then someone else is able to validate how you voted and force you to vote a particular way
voting systems you need to be able to validate that your vote is submitted as you wanted (imo only paper based voting allows for this), and then that the system for counting the votes is inviolable (that’s where scrutineers come in)… again, imo that’s not something you can do electronically - or at least practically
Can’t we be coerced to get in our car, drive to a polling place, and vote for a particular candidate? Blackmail, other threats, or financial incentives etc, I’m not sure why a physical polling place is safer than being able to vote anonymously
No matter who threatens you, they can’t see what’s on the paper ballot you put in a box. There’s people at the polling station that ensure that.
If there’s any way of tracking your vote, someone could threaten you, force you to vote a certain way, then force you to show the verification afterwards.
The safest way to ensure everyone gets a fair vote is paper ballots in a box.
I know the US uses a lot of mail-in voting, and that you generally deem it to be secure. I also understand that the US is a far less densely populated country than my own, which makes mail-in voting more necessary. However, we don’t have that in my country, and the reason I’m glad for it is exactly this: There’s no truly effective way to prevent anyone from forcing someone else to mail in a specific vote.
Thanks for trying.
What do you mean?
In your home, someone could force themselves in, force you to vote for someone and verify you did so.
With anonymous voting at a polling place, sure someone could force you to go there, but since the vote itself is anonymous (and there’s people around to check it is), they would never be able to verify that you indeed voted X or Y way. It’s also why most countries ban taking pictures of your vote; no proving to anyone how you voted!
Your examples are still the same. Polling places which require you to fill out your ballot by hand verify that you voted for someone because you can be watched or recorded as you were filling it out.
I’m not trying to be antagonistic. I literally just don’t see the difference.
You expressly can’t do this. This is why there’s a voting booth and observers who make sure you’re alone in the booth. And after you fill out the ballot, it gets folded inward and placed in a box that is closed off until election day is over. There’s no way to verify who you voted for, as your name isn’t on the ballot.
worth noting here that this is verification that your vote was submitted as you want it. from here, the system protects the integrity of the vote. interested parties (usually the major political parties) can organise scrutineers to follow the boxes from polling places to counting centres to ensure the boxes aren’t tampered with (along with seals and other physical security features). from there, people - multiple per vote - read and tally the big pile of votes… scrutineers here validate that the count is being conducted correctly (again, these are usually from any major party so anyone with something to gain or loose all agree on every single ballot that is counted). generally, if scrutineers disagree about a ballot it gets held for further processing of some kind
in these systems, it ensures integrity because the individual can ensure their vote is for sure cast how they want, and then anyone is able to validate the integrity of the count and process itself. there’s no place where this system can be measurably subverted (small scale fraud is pretty rare because it’s really not worth doing. large scale fraud is basically impossible to achieve without completely subverting an entire step in the process across the entire country, which is absolutely going to be noticed)
Could this be done such that a person cannot prove that they voted a certain way (the source of the problems people mention, like vote selling becoming viable)?
Maybe with a schema that allows a one time verify, and then churns your entry. If that verify occurs upon entry synchronously at the time you vote, if possible, that’d be no less safe than the paper ballot you feed into the machine.
You’re forgetting about the traffic analysis and key distribution problems
No different than how it’s recorded today. We can improve from there but it’s not worse with the upside of a public ledger.
You can do much better than a ledger with a commitment scheme and transparency log.