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<div dir="ltr">Hi Jeff: Here's some fuel for the e-voting fire on
the KWLUG mailing list:<br>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-rJX0Nmxg"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-rJX0Nmxg</a><br>
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<p>I won't call this a flame thingy. It is truly an important
subject with many sides to analyze, and any argument should be
considered. If it doesn't fit into a tweet, it is not necessarily
flaming :) . The more arguments, the more existing understanding
we surface, the more we can talk in prepared presentation. In
particular, after viewing aforementioned lecture, I can be more
fancy and say that what I want to talk about is an end-to-end
verifiable voting process with privacy, of which there are many
shades of protection.<br>
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<div>I was at that lecture (obnoxious guy in the front row), it
changed my mind about e-voting, that anonymity (secret ballot)
is incompatible with the requirement for ensuring there is
only one vote per person.<font color="#888888"><br>
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<p>In this statement I hear notes of "e-voting won't work". If I
hear it correctly, specify precise argument, or a connected chain
of arguments. No-go statements are universally difficult to prove.
Thus, I suggest that you may have a feeling, feeling influenced by
a nice talk, but a feeling nonetheless. Let me give an analogy.
You might be using an app like Signal for your messaging
end-to-end secured. But you don't know if firmware of your device
isn't snooping on your keys. Ya, firmware will send out mere 1kB
worth of signal to leak your key :) . Should we try to have
end-to-end encrypted tools, or should we give up?<br>
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<p>1) Confidentiality as an obligation. As soon as minute 3, speaker
says that confidentiality of vote is not a right, but must be an
obligation. Let me call BS on this one, backed by reality, and not
mere opinion.</p>
<p>Right now government of Belarus tries to convince people with
different logical fallacies that confidentiality is an obligation.
People want to transparently count their votes, to make all those
millions of photos of ballots that can't be ignored. People want
to know for certain that they are the majority, and government is
the minority, before deciding to go in front of tanks (a literal
option).</p>
<p>Right now, "confidentiality as an obligation" is a tool for
keeping in power forces that don't have majority support and also
count votes.<br>
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<p>2) Coercion. Let me add another sample of how it may happen.<br>
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<p>In Belarus, people are encouraged to vote in days before election
day. Night is the time to fix ballots in the box. It's this
simple. My own suspicion is that employed tricks come from USSR
times. And this mode of faking elections might be 90 years old,
not mere 15-ish.</p>
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<p>3) It seems to me that we should talk about election processes
through the prism of fail mode. Any process is good, when parties
behave honestly. How processes may fail? For example, Australian
Ballot system has been failing in Belarus, and "confidentiality as
an obligation" is a recipe for bloodier resolution, instead of a
more peaceful consensus. Which fail scenarios are real? Does a few
coerced-by-partner ballots out weigh on option of having a
verifiable count to protect against a coup? (Hi, Bolivia.)<br>
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