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Comment by nileshtrivedi | Hacker News Reader

Voting online will take away one of the biggest feature of a free and fair election: Lack of coercion. Voting must be done in a publicly visible manner (and yet, the ballot should remain secret) so that there is provably no coercion. Voting from home - will enable coercion by families, employers and goons.

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> Voting must be done in a publicly visible manner (and yet, the ballot should remain secret) so that there is provably no coercion.

There can certainly be coercion even in countries that maintain secret ballots. In Russian regions, it is not unheard of for civil servants and teachers to be told by their superiors that they must vote the favoured party “or else”, and a mobile phone picture of their ballot might be demanded as proof that they did so.

Which is why it is forbidden in many countries to take such pictures. Hadn't there been a scandal with Trumps son-in-law (or son maybe) who posted a picture of his ballot?

You think because it's illegal, it'll stop people that are being coerced?

In Germany, we have roughly this system (and I think that it is similar in US): the voting boxes are some rather tiny cardboard boxes which can be seen by the people running the election, they are rather open. You would need to be pretty sneaky to take pictures. As well, in Germany phones tend to not be able to switch off the clicking sound of the camera.

If I am able enough to tweak my stuff to take such a picture I'd be surely able enough to provide a fake picture. The attacker would need to provide the device which in turn does not scale very well. So, apart form husbands, this attack would not make much sense.

If that was to be done in scale, it'd be noticed fast. And people would ask questions quickly. That might be different for Russia, I admit. In US, no need for all that, you have electronic voting boxes, which are completely opaque to voters and counters.

EDIT: spelling.

It doesn't matter if it's forbidden to take pictures if it's done in private

So take the picture, dispose of the ballot and get a new one from the election officials. Fill the new one with your own choice, get it stamped and put it into the ballot box. A bit of a hassle to be sure, but it does not exactly derail democracy.

The coercer can stand outside the window looking in, or somewhere nearby, to check that you don't go take a new one.

Hardly scales.

LOL

nobody not-voting allowed in the actual-voting portion of my local polling areas, and windows were covered over, as i recall.

whatever increasingly convoluted suggestion you'll make next probably doesn't work either.

You're already coercing people into voting your way. It'll be peanuts to coerce a person who works in the polling areas to jot down who came to ask for a ballot twice.

I also don't appreciate your arrogance in trying to shut down this discussion pre-emptively. Maybe try listening more in the future, you might discover interesting things even if they don't agree with your pre-set ideas.

The officials "represent" different different parties. They keep eye on one another, so anyone keeping a personal list of voters would probably be caught quite easily. Besides, the last time I voted, the ballots were handed out at the entrance - long before anyone wanted to know who I am.

When a population has already lost faith in their authorities, and they think that their single vote counts for nothing and the results are probably rigged anyway, then most of them probably can’t be bothered to make the additional effort you describe.

You can be pressured still with paper voting: They can just ask you to take a picture of your voting card with your mobile phone. It's illegal but no one will notice because, guess what, you're in a private voting booth that no one should be able to see into.

There are ways to avoid being coerced when enabling online vote: have an online vote for a week, then a few days after the online vote ends, have one day of paper voting. If you were coerced during the online vote, you can still go to the paper vote later, at which point your online vote will be overwritten by the paper vote[0]. This is still not fool proof (i.e. one can force people not to go to the paper vote after coercing their online vote) but as explained above, neither is normal voting.

Extortion of individual voters doesn't scale. Electronic voting could be manipulated for millions of votes without anyone even knowing.

I was merely pointing out that "Lack of coercion" is not a inherent feature of paper voting nor a feature that is lacking in electronic voting.

In the scenario you described above what is to stop you from taking a picture of a different voting card than the one you put in the envelope?

You are only issued one voting card.

Is this in the US? In my country you get one envelope and one ballot paper for each party so that wouldn't work.

(in the US) i was free to request an additional ballot if i made a mistake/damaged mine, last i went in in person.

The real solution to the picture thing is to help forge those photos. Create a booth where ballots aren't counted, and let people vote however they want there, and let them take pictures. A picture then says nothing, because the coercer cannot verify the picture. The biggest hole here is that the coercer might follow you into the polling station to see if you use the fake booth.

Not only that, in Germany also the counting is public, if you wish so, you can attend it.

That doesn't really matter, because you can only be present at one place at a time. You still have to trust other anonymous parties

It's not about me checking the election, it's about the public to be able to. Our parties regularly send representatives to check.

It's like open source software. I am not able to check everything I use. But there are parts where I am capable enough to do so. For the rest I rely on others to do so.

You can't run a society without trust. It's about the ability to verify or have persons you trust to verify for you.

So how is this different with a public blockchain type ledger?

Everybody understands this system.

Honestly, postal voting already scares me from a coercion point-of-view (and this isn't entirely hypothetical: almost every election cycle we hear of people being coerced by their partners into getting postal votes because then they control their vote far more easily). I would much rather do whatever is necessary to make it possible for as close to everyone as possible to vote in person.

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