[conspire] Stolen election narratives, CA edition

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

On 9/21/21 00:43, Rick Moen wrote:

> I'm picturing a future ballot mechanism where the ballot has a unique
> number shown and readable.  But also, my entering choices on the ballot
> generates a crypto hash value derived from my choices, maybe with a
> salting value added, and I'm able to read off and store that value with
> my ballot number.  Imagine this going onto into an electronic record
> signed by the election office's key, and I get a copy when I vote.  This
> is thus the higher-tech version of a paper "stub", but adds in the hash
> representing my voted selections.

> In this scenario, the ballot numbers and accompanying salted hashes of
> all received votes would be public information, available for everyone
> to scrutinise.  I, as the voter, having my independently received and
> stored "stub", could verify not only that my ballot was recorded, but
> also that it was recorded _correctly_ -- that my vote for Frank Church
> wasn't corrupted into one for George Wallace, so to speak.

> The United States, like its UK progenitor, made a policy decision a long
> time ago that ballot secrecy should be protected, to allow voters to
> privately vote any way they want without backlash from anyone.  But,
> please note:  Ballot secrecy is _not_ necessary in order to have a
> healthy democracy.  For privacy, yes.  For democracy, no.  This policy
> imperative always makes election _security_ a bit more challenging,
> because it means a citizen's entitlement to vote, having not voted
> twice, etc.  must be verified _before_ counting votes, as the ballot
> must get separated from all identifying information permitting anyone
> to trace back a particular set of choices to a particular voter.

...

Privacy may be VERY important depending on the context.
Consider that if you can check how you voted, someone else may check as 
well. And if your problem is paid votes/blackmailed voters, this is an 
issue.

> I _think_ the whiteboard-exercise ballot redesign that I just spitballed
> achieves ability to trace (and verify the correct recording of) one's
> full voting choices as an individual voter, and at the same time
> protects voter ballot secrecy.  That is, I'm pretty sure that a
> competently hashed, salted value put into the public record cannot be
> reversed to determine whether I voted for Frank Church vs. George
> Wallace vs. Mo Udall vs. Henry "Scoop" Jackson vs. Jerry Brown (back
> when he had hair) vs. Jimmy Carter vs. Sargent Shriver vs. Birch Bayh
> vs. Lloyd Bensen.

This talk about online voting at large, not only on electronic voting, 
but still interesting:

https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/are-blockchain-voting-technologies-safe-23155

Again some of the threat models depends on the context.
Again election frauds are just one of the many issues you've to face to 
have a functional democracy.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
https://www.webthatworks.it https://www.borgonovo.net