Re: Supporting the spirit of Democracy

[echarp <emmanuel.charpentier(at)free.fr>]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 07:39:42PM +0100, ROY DAINE wrote:
> ...
>
> With regard to validation. In an election, as a registered voter, I go to the
> polling station and make my mark on a bit of paper. When that paper is counted
> my vote cannot be traced back to me.
> With electronic voting, the same does not apply. Does it not occur, that I
> might have considered the problem. As far as I am aware, there exists no way to
> validate a user as a real person, from a real address, while maintaining
> anonymity. As to voting, any system needs to know if a user has voted.
> Therefore a vote has to be related to a userID of some sort. You have to count
> the votes. Let us say there is a 70 - 30 split on a yes/no question. It is easy
> then to find out who has voted whichever way.

Yes, voting does require a link at one point or another to a voter. And
in the information world, this very bit of information is actually
difficult to lose.

> Personally, I have no wish to collect personal identifying info on anybody. I
> don't want the responsibility. Who's to say I could be trusted with such
> information. Who watches the watchers.
>
> What I would like, is for every user to be validated as a real person, from a
> real address, while remaining anonymous to the site. I don't think it can be
> done.
>
> Mirek says he has part of the answer to this but I haven't understood the
> little he told me.

There are ways to ensure "some" level of anonymity, my preferred
mechanism would rely on a third party that each voter could individually
choose and which would allow him to create a pseudo. The link between
this pseudo and the real identity could only be retrieved from that
third party.

Or even, the created pseudo could be used for only one vote, and the
third party would "lose" the relational data.

Moreover to an electronic system, the most paranoids could still go to a
physical polling station, where the relationship between a voter and his
vote is lost among all the papers. That polling station would in fact
act as yet another third party, all votes being related to an uniquely
generated pseudo, thus ensuring traceability and accountability.

The least paranoid, or those wanting to advertise their choices for
whatever reason, can choose to vote publicly.

What do you think?

> In conclusion, I realise that I may be wrong about all this but I have read no
> argument to convince me thus far.
> Best
> Roy

I've been thinking a lot about all this, because security is the number
one feature we should have in a real and ambitious system. See following
links:
  - http://echarp.org/howToTrustIVotes
  - http://leparlement.org/security

echarp - http://leparlement.org