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

[Frédéric Dubouchet]

I'm just reacting to a single sentence in your talk so feel free to 
scroll down.

On 11.12.12 17:27, Maxime Rouquet wrote:
> 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.
In Switzerland in most of the places there is something like 200 people 
voting so there is no secret of voting. In some regions in the mountains 
if you want to have a loan in a bank you have to vote for the good party 
or you won't get it, not talking about the fact that this loan is going 
to make you have to pay for the rest of your life because we are so rich 
that we cannot afford to own our houses! There is cases like this one 
where a centralized electronic voting system could prevent some problems 
that we see. Paper ballot voting has it's own limitations.
>
> 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
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greets,

anirul