[HacktionLab] Fraud proof voting - will it work?

[clara]

On 12/10/2013 12:32 PM, Alan Dawson wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 09, 2013 at 07:09:07PM +0000, penguin wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>> Through work, I've come across this thing called fraud proof
>> voting - it's been developed by some guy with a (seemingly)
>> specific focus on Africa. I wondered if any crypto-experts on
>> this list had any views on how fraud proof it really is.
>> 
>> Details here http://cd3wd.com/SEEV/fpv.htm
> 
> "The SMS and the envelop data files are destroyed immediately or
> within a fixed time period after the final result is announced
> (since they can be used to track the voting choice of every
> voter).. The data may be used to produce aggregated results down to
> a specified level (e.g. down to population centers of 5,000 or
> 50,000) but no further – to avoid retribution by disappointed
> parties."
> 
> 
> This seems like a flaw to me.  3 powerful actors - the voting
> organisation and the auditors, have access to non anonymised copies
> of all the votes, also it hopes that those actors do not conspire
> together to fix the result, and there is no way to verify the
> results again later, as they are destroyed.  So mathematically I
> don't think it  provides a secure, anonymous, verifiable, system.
> It may be practical though
> 
> There are solutions to anonymous voting that are cryptographically
> secure - like mix nets, but I think they fail ekes' test of
> understandability.
> http://crypto.stanford.edu/pbc/notes/crypto/voting.xhtml

as ekes pointed out earlier: A ballot box with pieces of paper on
which you can mark your vote (and that can be based on words as well
as on pictures), a continous presence of observers, and public
counting, the possibility for a re-count: that are tools that can be
easily understood and applied.
But relying on access to telephones and SMS, to volunteers touring the
country, data and papers to be destroyed: That means that the election
cannot be controlled or observed by those people who are electing
their representatives.

It means putting an election process into the hand of a few
individuals and companies with the relevant technical expertise and
equipment - and the only thing the voter can do is _trust_ them.

'Trust' however is not the basis of a stable election -
'accountability' and 'transparency' are.


greetings
clara

PS: If you want to have a simple example of trust not being enough:
Check the videos and theories going around about whether the Fifa boss
interfered with the drawing of the World Championship groups a few
days ago. And there we even only talk about the seconds the papers
disappeared from view during a live broadcast...