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Comment by dec0dedab0de | Hacker News Reader

Every time this comes up, it seems to me that the obvious answer is that we should get rid of the secret ballot. If everyone's vote is public then everyone can check that their own vote was counted correctly. I know the argument is that people may face pressure at home and be afraid to vote, but is there anyone left who doesn't tell everyone how they voted? Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but I know exactly who all of my friends, and family voted for, none of them ever tried to keep it a secret.

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Secret voting became a thing because people were facing harassment, termination from their jobs, and violence when they voted "incorrectly". It's naive to think these problems won't return immediately if votes become public.

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it"

Not only is secret voting an integral part of a democratic voting system, it is also entirely possible to implement a system where everyone can check their own vote while keeping their vote secret. Each registrant can simply be given a unique string that is connected with their vote.

We have these "receipts" with a code that matches the one on the ballot on the paper ballots in SF, though I've never actually tried to check it anywhere.

Has anyone else tried this?

The SF elections website allows you to confirm that your ballot was counted. But not how you voted.

And Scantegrity lets you further confirm that your individual votes on the ballot were counted correctly, but still keeps the whole vote secret.

Having the ability to verify your own vote is still dangerous.

There's a fine line between "can be verified by the government at any time who you voted for" and "can be forced to show proof of who you voted for" or even "if you don't publicly show your proof of who you voted for, you are on a list". not to mention the ability to "sell" your vote to whoever and have proof that you followed through.

In a truly "secret ballot" voting system, you should be incapable of proving who you voted for. You can still tell others who you voted for, but there shouldn't be any "proof".

Look up Scantegrity. It provides the ability to prove that your vote was counted as cast, but not the ability to prove who you voted for.

I'm perfectly fine with being able to prove your vote was cast (I'd actually prefer if you were required by law to vote. You can make a vote of "nobody", but you'd need to vote), but that is very different from being able to verify who you voted for.

But even still paper ballots where you check off a square and put it in a box can give the same assurances as that complicated Scantegrity system as long as you stick around and watch the ballot box yourself till it's counted. yes, it's a day of time, but it's something you or literally anyone else can do regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, social status, education, or anything else.

Not possible to watch it being counted.

* The ballot gets mixed in with others * the bundle gets divided up (A cards go in 1 bundle, B cards go another) * taken to a vote counting location; * each bundle is then divide between ballot counting machines.

The whole point is that an individual ballot becomes untraceable before the counting actually starts.

I disagree.

When you're casting a vote on paper, it's pretty easy to check that your vote is not being observed.

When you're casting an electronic vote, you have no such option. You can claim the vote is secret. The developers of the voting machine can claim the vote is secret. But the voter has no way to verify this.

Secret voting is too important to be left to voting machines.

> When you're casting a vote on paper, it's pretty easy to check that your vote is not being observed.

One thing I've been thinking about lately, is that while we all probably have better intuition for "protecting" our paper vote, I'm not convinced that the huge advances in monitoring technology, covert and generally available, hasn't to an extent invalidated this somewhat.

You really only need to be able to read some markings on paper (in IR, via some kind of fairly low resolution x-ray, what have you) - with the voter (eg: general camera surveillance showing a person entering a voting booth) - in order to monitor a vote. It's certainly much higher demand on manpower to do it, but I don't think it should be discounted - the payoff will be proportional to the power wielded by the public office being elected for.

So while I think "lets do electronic voting!" is a crazy blanked-statement to make in order to improve security, I don't think we should be so certain analog voting is as secure today, as it was in the 80s and earlier.

> I don't think we should be so certain analog voting is as secure today, as it was in the 80s and earlier.

correct - the machines are vulnerable even if the paper is not.

That doesn't solve any of the problems that public voting records creates. You can't keep your vote secret if you can access it later. Someone can steal your secret identifier or they can coerce you to give it up.

The unique string would enable coercion (you come back from the polls with the string that says you voted X or else your mother gets it!) and vote selling (you come back from the polls with the string that says you voted X and this wad of dough is yours).

> you come back from the polls with the string that says you voted X

How would the criminals know what the unique string would be for a particular vote?

No it's not possible. If you provide any way for an individual to verify their own vote, then they can be coerced to provide the same proof to someone else.

In this case the coercer would just force the voter to give them their string after they vote. Now they could theoretically lie, but they'd have to be able to give a valid string that matches the preferred vote of the coercer, and that no one else has already given them. This is sufficiently hard to arrange that at least some people will not be able to do so.

> is there anyone left who doesn't tell everyone how they voted?

Of course; there are people who live with family members who are very vocal about The Right Way To Vote; there are people who live in parts of the country that are the same way; and there are people who work for employers who they don't see eye-to-eye with politically.

Imagine living in a devout Catholic household, and voting for a pro-abortion candidate. Or working for a gas fracking company, where every other employee has a gun rack on their truck, and voting for the gun-control candidate.

I think the argument is more that someone can then sell their vote, because they can prove how they voted.

What if some of them kept it a secret by misrepresenting things to you?

With secret ballots, you have no way to verify whether this is the case.

There's also things like not worrying about disclosing it to you but keeping it private from, say, a manager or employer.

And on and on. Saying something like it wouldn't bother me and mine any is sort of a weak argument for things that will apply to everyone, because there are lots of people with lots of different circumstances.

>If everyone's vote is public then

...people can be coerced to vote a certain way.

Your personal experience doesn't apply at large, as you rightly wondered.

This makes me wonder. What if you had a -choice- of making your vote public?

Perhaps a percentage of the voters, those who fear no public repercussions, would choose to make their own public.

What would be the implications in this situation?

You can do that today. However, no one can verify you are telling the truth. That is the key point.

If you can choose to make your vote public then you can be coerced to make it public.

> but is there anyone left who doesn't tell everyone how they voted?

2016 was full of such examples in at least 2 countries ...

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