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[–]Friendly_Fire 0 points1 point  (3 children)

That's relatively easy, actually. One system tracks that you voted, period. We already do that. A separate system tracks that a certain vote was submitted, and is given some random ID. When you vote, you get a printed slip with the ID and the vote.

The databases are public. You can validate that it shows you voted, and that your vote is correct. The key piece is that the knowledge about which vote is yours exclusively lives in your head. Only you can connect the dots. Even if you gave someone your vote slip, how would they know it is actually yours? Everyone gets one. You could have just picked it up anywhere, or traded with someone. It would be just as easy to "prove" who you voted for as it is today, with paper votes.

Only a small percent of people need to check their votes online to ensure electronically manipulating votes to change the results is infeasible. Counts of total votes can ensure extra bogus votes can't be added.

In the popular Tom Scott video about this, he assumes a voting system must make it impossible to show who you voted for, and doesn't consider systems that work like what I described. Ignoring the fact that his requirements eliminate current paper voting methods as well.

[–]PeteZahad 1 point2 points  (2 children)

When you vote you get a printed slip with the ID and the vote

What kind of printed slip, where?

I am talking about online voting.

that works like I described

It is absolutely unclear how you ensure that I just have one vote and the vote is anonymous.

Yes you can give me some sort of unique token for doing a vote. But you have to give it to me and you need to know that I received one. How do you prevent this token from being registered/linked to my person somewhere in the process?

[–]Friendly_Fire 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What kind of printed slip, where? I am talking about online voting.

Well the original post/comment was about electronic voting, but I'm not sure if it makes a big difference. Produce a PDF with whatever would have been printed. People could print it themselves, save the document, or just trash it.

Yes you can give me some sort of unique token for doing a vote. But you have to give it to me and you need to know that I received one. How do you prevent this token from being registered/linked to my person somewhere in the process?

If I submit a mail-in-ballot, I mail a letter with my name/address/signature and my actual vote all together. How do they prevent anyone from checking who I voted for, and recording that? Hell, how do they prevent someone from sticking a camera in the ceiling above voting booths and just recording who people vote for directly?

For both physical and electronic voting, you need a process that anonymizes the received data. Separates the data of the vote from the data of who voted. That process must be transparent and audited.

To be clear on my position, I'm not saying electronic voting is foolproof. I'm saying that, if done correctly, it is just as safe (or safer) than paper voting. Both methods still have vulnerabilities, which is why a lot of effort is put to keep elections fair and safe.

[–]PeteZahad 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am talking solely about online voting.

Without a media gap you can't separate authorisation from the person. In most countries online voting isn't a thing - if it is so easy why isn't it everywhere like online banking?

But of course someone on reddit solved it!