[kwlug-disc] Say No To Electronic Voting ...

[Chris Frey]

On Sat, Aug 08, 2020 at 08:47:51AM -0400, Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc wrote:
> Verification in election means that voter can verify that vote is correctly
> recorded. Voting system becomes an oracle that answers some question, and
> depending, on the answer you can tell that vote is correctly recorded.
> 
> Let's combine human coercion setting with oracle:
> 
> 1) Coercer has access to voter's voting material, ids, keys, etc.
> 
> 2) Coercer uses voting material together with expected, coerced vote values
> to form a request to an oracle.
> 
> 3) Coercer checks oracle's reply. Reply indicates if voter put expected
> vote, or not. Thus, coercer checks if victim did "the right thing", closing
> coercion loop of information, i.e. verification by an attacker.

I suspect you're right.  When I boil down the requirements list for this
hypothetical voting system, I get:

Requirements:
 1) government gets to determine if a person is eligible to vote
 2) all votes verifiable by all citizens, in order to:
    a) make sure your own vote was counted and correct
    b) make sure everyone else's vote was counted and correct
    c) make sure no votes were added to the results from invalid sources
    d) make sure no votes were counted twice
    e) make sure that spoiled ballot votes are properly counted
 3) no one can trace a given voting choice back to the voter, only the fact
    that he voted
 4) no one can trace a voter to his voting choice, only the fact that he voted
 5) no voting done online, since coercion could happen in real time during
    the voting process at home or at work or anywhere with internet access

Verdict: Self-contradictory, impossible, and useless. Stick with paper ballots.

Of course, "impossible" these days is often just a matter of time. :-)

- Chris