[pp.int.general] Online voting versus online discussion

[Maxime Rouquet]

On 12/11/2012 03:37 PM, Thomas Bruderer wrote:
> Why should we be able to make secure bank transfers, but not secure voting?

Because we trace individual bank transfers and because one can oppose to
a bank transfer within a few days.

If you want to have secret voting then it is not possible to check that
your vote is taken rightly into account in the total... so your bank
transfer parallel does not work.

The key to understand why secret ballot electronic voting systems are
wrong is the principle of control of the vote directly by the public.
With a paper ballot vote (with all safeguards such as transparent ballot
box), anybody can observe the voting and counting procedures, and check
that everybody's vote is rightly taken into account.

With electronic systems, whatever way you put it, everybody cannot check
by himself that their is no fraud at least at the level of his polling
station. Sure there could in both case have fraud with lists of voters,
but apart from that paper ballots are the only way to achieve secrecy of
the vote together with the possibility for the public to control the
full progress of the voting operations.

So, yes, anything "done right" as you say is perfect. The problem is to
build a system where everything is right even if the people who run the
vote are desperately wanting to fraud ! Try to think this way instead :
find a voting procedure so secure that if gives the true result even if
a lot of people wanted to fraud including those who organised the vote.

All the electronic voting systems that would reach that for the public
would have to breach, one way or the other, the secrecy of the vote.

If you add to the equation that all citizens are not entirely reliable
for a reason or the other, you have to rule out non-secret option.

Assume, for instance, that some of the voters will be oppressed by bad
people if they do not vote "rightly". Or, simply, that some persons will
"buy" votes they will have the ability to check (or even proceed
themselves after buying the login), and you will end up with paper
ballots as the only possible answer to avoid most types of fraud.

Maybe in Switzerland the people are so rich and nice and used to
democracy none of them would imagine putting pressure on voters, buying
votes or threatening other citizens to vote as they wish. But in many
countries there are at least a few places where this is not true.

I am not talking about Belarus here : in France, media are currently
talking about political murders happening in Corsica. I can't wait to
see what these murderers would do if the vote was not entirely secret !
(For the record, at the moment some focus on fake voters, for instance
they don't declare deaths and make the gone people delegate their vote.)

Non-secret voting procedure would be a dream for any despot. It could be
useful not to forget that most states in the world are not democracies
and not to start throwing in the trash fundamental principles such as
secrecy of the vote and control by the public.

Regards,

m