[EL] Case in point: Secret signatures and secret ballots

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall]

I've hesitated to mention cryptographic end-to-end voting schemes... many
allow any member of the public to verify that each ballot cast made it into
the resulting count, without revealing anything about the voter that cast
the ballot (they use a variety of clever cryptographic "primitives" such as
zero-knowledge proofs [1], which allow one to prove they know something
without revealing what it is).

The trouble here is that crypto relies on sophisticated math that can be
very opaque in these contexts (voting systems use advanced cryptography in
many cases that requires an extensive background in intermediate mathematics
(upper-level undergraduates, essentially). Many are working on bringing it
down to the "smart high school student" level!

Here's a great introductory tutorial for a broad elections audience by Ben
Adida (PhD student of Ron Rivest's, now at Mozilla):

http://www.usenix.org/events/evtwote09/tech/slides/adida-crypto.pdf
http://www.usenix.org/media/events/evtwote09/tech/mp3/adida_talk.mp3

best, Joe

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

On Wednesday, October 19, 2011, Soren Dayton <soren.dayton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps this case illustrates the real problem with this discussion.
There's a tension between stopping fraud, which basically requires public
disclosure of some form, and coercion and retribution. Furthermore, the
electoral system is fundamentally adversarial, so, in general, one would
expect the other side to have the interest in checking the fraud here.
> So does anonymity require giving up on the idea of fraud checking? Do we
do this for ballot access in general or just petitions?
>
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Scott F. Bieniek <
sbieniek at bienieklaw.com> wrote:
>>
>> The fraud detected by the student was detected using traditional methods,
and did not turn on the public disclosure of the petitions:
>> "signatures that he says appeared to be written in the same
handwriting..."
>> The student detected the fraud without any need to confirm that an
individual actually signed the petition (it was evident on their face),
although such reports certainly validate his findings after the fact.
>> Review of ballot petitions is hardly the only instance where we rely on a
government employee to verify the accuracy of a document. Every year,
millions of Americans file tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
With the exception of income reported on information returns (W-2, 1099,
etc), the entire system is premised upon an individual taxpayer voluntarily
reporting any and all income.
>> If you are in favor of public disclosure for ballot petitions, why not
require public disclosure of tax returns? Your neighbor is in a far better
position than the IRS agent to determine whether you accurately reported the
income. Your neighbor after all, can see that new boat sitting in your
driveway, or the extension you just added to your home.
>> -Scott F. Bieniek
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Bev Harris <bev at blackboxvoting.org>
wrote:
>>>
>>> The news story excerpted below describes a member of the public, a
college
>>> student, who sought to authenticate the accounting on petitions.
>>>
>>> " Nees ...  delved into the Byzantine and complicated world of petition
>>> signatures and found reams of signatures that he says appeared to be
written in
>>> the same handwriting, some apparently copied from previous petitions."
>>>
>>> The county attorney is now investigating.
>>>
>>> This is an accounting issue, not a privacy issue. The petition signers
need to
>>> be publicly disclosed because that's the only way the public can
authenticate a
>>> petition.
>>>
>>> If you use a hidden accounting system controlled by the government(ie,
the
>>> secretary of state and persons he chooses will examine the signatures
and tell
>>> us the result, without any way for us to authenticate) you alter the
structural
>>> framework of the democratic system, allowing the government to choose
itself
>>> (in the case of a petition for a candidate) and to choose the rules for
its own
>>> governance (in the case of policy petitions).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bev Harris
>>> Founder - Black Box Voting
>>> http://www.blackboxvoting.org
>>>
>>> * * * * *
>>>
>>> Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
>>> people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the
right
>>> to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for
them to
>>> know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over
the
>>> instruments of government we have created.
>>>
>>> Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog
group
>>> funded entirely by citizen donations.
>>> http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
>>> Black Box Voting
>>> 330 SW 43rd St Suite K
>>> PMB 547
>>> Renton WA 98057
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>>> This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Law-election mailing list
>>> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Law-election mailing list
>> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>

-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Media, Culture and Communication
New York University
https://josephhall.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20111019/59878b25/attachment.html>