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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

The easiest way to go about this would be to give up the requirement that votes are private. This would make the need for cryptography drop away completely, and trusted third parties mostly. Individual voters could verify that their votes were counted correctly, and everyone could verify that eg dead people didn't vote.

I'm not saying this is a good policy, just a hard technical tradeoff of what would be required for verifiable voting without cryptography.

It's an all or nothing proposition too. A hybrid system (opt in to make your vote public so it can be publicly verified) would create additional vote pools that would differ based on ideological preferences and thereby attract calls to disenfranchise, as we've seen for mail in voting.

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It worries me that you don't see how fundamentally that undermines the point of democracy.

It's illegal to take a photo of your ballot to prove who you voted for, think about why. Because if you could then the local crime-ring would force every person they can intimidate to go vote for their boss and take a photo to prove it or the thugs will hurt their kids.

Or maybe think about the pressure some people surrounded by family and friends of the opposite party feel. Sure they will wave the right coloured flag and throw dirt at the TV with their friends at the "wrong" guy, but when safe and sound in the voters box they can do what they like. Imagine if all your friends "opted" into revealing their vote and you didn't.

It worries me that you failed at basic reading comprehension, yet still attacked me for what I overtly disclaimed:

> I'm not saying this is a good policy, just a hard technical tradeoff of what would be required for verifiable voting without cryptography.

It's a hard technical fact, that's all I was saying. Either trusted third parties (that are currently being maligned to shake our faith in the voting system), open ledger voting, or steep cryptography. I'm personally in favor of the cryptography, but I'm also able to understand it. Unfortunately as it goes against making the system widely understandable, I'd expect the same kind of "fake news" attacks were seeing presently.

FWIW mail in voting also gets rid of the secret ballot. Organizations haven't really adapted to taking advantage of this, but we're on borrowed time. The fundamental problem is that our current system relies on trusted third parties, and that trust is breaking down.

It's legal in lots of places https://www.vox.com/21523858/ballot-selfies-state-rules

Neat, and in the same article it talks about how it's a bad thing due to voter intimidation, with examples of it happening.

On the other hand you have no proof of who you voted for, and this have no way to determine if the vote was counted was the one you made

Wow. I mean, I'm very sympathetic that people should get private votes, but your description of someone faking their opinion and throwing dirt makes me sort of hate the person in your example. Mark Twain comes to mind. What an interesting way to garner sympathy.

More of your friends than you think hide their true thoughts and opinions from you, because they (often correctly) expect social censure if they reveal them.

What about a mother who doesn't want her kids in the army to go to war but the whole house supports a war-monger?

Or doctor who has a single opinion about a practice they want legalised, but doesn't want to admit it to anyone.

A gay teen surrounded by homophobic people who wants to legalise their sexuality but has to fake it and shout at rallies because otherwise people might question what's up.

Those weren't hard to come up with...

What about them? Their valid reasons do not make their actions palatable.

Why is it okay then for the votes of the elected legislators to be public? Wouldn’t all your arguments apply equally (or much more, given how much more powerful their individual votes are) to legislators?

I think there's a reasonable case that legislators should have a secret ballot so as to reduce their vulnerability to lobbyists and donors. Not sure if I agree but it's a reasonable position. I don't think there's any major country like that though. A representative volunteered and publically campaigned as being for X, Y, and Z, so either they vote for those positions and the public gets what they asked for, or they don't and they lose their job. In practice, life is more complicated of course, but that's the idea.

Unlike voters, legislators are expected to be individually accountable. There are reasons why secret ballot is possible in parliament, but considered exceptional (or shady) measure.

Lobbyists and donors vulnerability is better alleviated by fixed salary and functional impartial criminal/justice system.

I think the expectation of accountability is the key difference, but I’m not sure why we don’t expect individual voters to be accountable in any way for their political beliefs and votes, even to light social criticism.

Assuming for the sake of argument that light social criticism in response to one's voting preferences being publicly known is always a good thing, can you suggest a means where someone can be exposed to this alone, excluding all the other potential abuses sketched in the comments above? I don't think it is possible.

Added to that, it could lead to 'always on' political discourse, which tends to be divisive and disruptive. This is the reason that companies prohibit political discussion in the workplace, or family get-togethers can become nightmares when strongly opinionated relatives clash.

It also excludes the possibility of agreeing to disagree, which is based on an acknowledgement of human fallibility, that people have intrinsic worth apart from their opinions, and that a diversity of opinions may be overall more beneficial than strict uniformity.

I wasn’t suggesting some database of everyone’s votes to facilitate social criticism. I’m just referring to people who complain about getting criticism from friends/family/peers for certain political beliefs which were shared explicitly.

It's a universally bad policy. Public votes mean those with money will purchase them, as they have the ability to validate their investment. We have examples of for the general electorate pre-1885 and in Congress post-Watergate.

And plenty in our current times as well.

Mexican politicians buy votes with a one time delivery of grocery bags or 20-50 dollar grocery store cards.

How do they verify the votes? Or does Mexico not have secret ballots, either officially or in practice?

I think public voting is untenable due to the massively increased risk of voter intimidation[0]. Any voting process that requires it is going to be a non-starter unless you can change human behavior.

[0] A recent example: https://news.yahoo.com/mystery-blue-dots-painted-near-225645...

But then social pressure might overwhelm individual choices. It's gonna be harder for people to disagree with the mass, because they then can be punished easily. Given how our current society operates, I can't see this work anywhere at all.

Seems like a bad idea when political leaders are calling for compiling enemies lists and punishing opposition supporters.

https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/aoc-facing-heat-for-wanting-to...

Hey, could you point me to where the political leader you're referring to has actually called for punishing opposition supporters? The tweets she actually wrote only explicitly ask for archiving things people have posted publicly, not for punishing anyone.

It's obviously possible to read what she wrote as a plan to compile a list of enemies for future consequences, but just to give an alternate perspective, I read what was said as a simple call for accountability of public figures (i.e: politicians within the Republican party who have supported Trump, but now are disavowing him), rather than being intended as some sort of mass-surveillance programme targetted at anyone who disagreed with her.

>It's obviously possible to read what she wrote as a plan to compile a list of enemies for future consequences

Yes, yes it is.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/first-...

This doesn't provide any more evidence for AOC having called for punishing opposition supporters, does it?

Tapper doesn't appear to be directing employers to do anything here: he's stating how employers judge candidates, and noting how considering one's actions in that frame might cause one to act differently. There's not a threat here, it's an acknowledgement of how society works.

My point is that these aren't reasonable interpretations of what these figures have said. Like I said, it's certainly possible to read into their words as much as you want, but it requires far fewer assumptions about the unknowable mental states of others to simply take their words at face value. Divorced of the spin placed onto what's been said by the press, these statements are entirely innocuous.

Of course they can’t do that; they’re deliberately misrepresenting a statement in order to stir up more of this nonsense.

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