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Re: Firm invites experts to punch holes in ballot software

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ian Grigg)
Fri Apr 9 11:11:38 2004

X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:58:05 -0400
From: Ian Grigg <iang@systemics.com>
To: Brian McGroarty <brian@mcgroarty.net>
Cc: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>,
	"'Major Variola (ret)'" <mv@cdc.gov>, cryptography@metzdowd.com,
	cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net
In-Reply-To: <20040408134203.GA6735@mcgroarty.net>

Brian McGroarty wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 03:42:47PM -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:

>>It seems to me that the requirement for after-the-vote
>>verification ("to prove your vote was counted") clashes
>>rather directly with the requirement to protect voters
>>from coercion ("I can't prove I voted in a particular
>>way.") or other incentives-based attacks.
>>
>>You can have one, or the other, but not both, right?
> 
> 
> Suppose individual ballots weren't usable to verify a vote, but
> instead confirming data was distributed across 2-3 future ballot
> receipts such that all of them were needed to reconstruct another
> ballot's vote.
> 
> It would then be possible to verify an election with reasonable
> confidence if a large number of ballot receipts were collected, but
> individual ballot receipts would be worthless.


If I'm happy to pervert the electoral
process, then I'm quite happy to do it
in busloads.  In fact, this is a common
approach, busses are paid for by a party
candidate, the 1st stop is the polling
booth, the 2nd stop is the party booth.

In the west, this is done with old people's
homes, so I hear.

Now, one could say that we'd distribute
the verifiability over a random set of
pollees, but that would make the verification
impractically expensive.

iang

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