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Comment by tromp | Hacker News Reader

> Using the web interface, the voter enters her credential and selects her vote. Her computer then computes the ballot, which corresponds to the vote encrypted with the election public key.

Like most (or all?) online protocols, this doesn't protect against vote selling or vote coercion.

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I was going to say. AFAIK, no one has worked out a way that you can verify that your own vote was counted, while preventing you from being able to sell your vote.

There are a number of such systems that do this via revoting or dummy ballots. One of my projects, Votexx, uses vote nullification (or flipping) via a trusted third party chosen by the voter.

The general idea for all of these is if you add uncertainty you reduce what a coercer is willing to pay creating a mutually assured destruction scenario whereby the system being in place ensures nobody ever tries it.

Votexx.org if you want to learn more.

The website on VoteXX and associated 4 page preprint does not offer comprehensive overview of the system. What happens to verifiabiloty when the vote is nullified? Does voter sees that the vote is cancelled and hence also coercer/briber?

The same could be said of mail in paper ballots too, which have seen widespread adoption in the United States starting in 2020, so I don’t think this should be a knock against this system.

How would you prove that you voted how you said you did?

If you took a picture of your ballot, or even if you filmed yourself putting it in the envelope and putting it in the mailbox, there's nothing stopping you from taking it out later, tearing it up, and going to vote differently in person.

Just do it in person. The voter fills out the ballot in front of the buyer, seals and signs the envelope, and hands it to the buyer in exchange for cash. The buyer then puts it in the mail on the voter’s behalf.

The voter could go to a polling place afterwards and attempt to cast a provisional ballot but my understanding is that this is difficult, varies significantly state to state, and in many cases is not possible given that mail in ballots are detached from the voter identity ahead of Election Day in many states.

First, this is too much trouble and many won't do this, second, you can lie to people that you have the means to verify their vote, third, you might require a person to write a code word on the ballot so that you can verify that they actually casted that ballot.

You haven't heard people "knocking" about the widespread adoption of mail in paper ballots? They simply offer no protection against vote coercion which is not a good choice in any election of importance. Pretty sure at least one of the two parties has ending mail-in voting as a long-held position.

At the least, this will often result in heads of household voting for their entire families. At the most, it can result in people voting under the supervision of a local gang/militia member.

If anyone is looking for the right terminology to find papers, it's "no-receipt" voting. The holy grail is no-receipt, yet verifiable voting, but it might be mathematically impossible.

The website says that your vote is last-write-wins. I think the idea is I could sell my vote and vote for A, then later re-vote for B. Since you can't trust that I won't just re-vote it won't be worth paying for.

But if you held a gun to my head and made me vote at 18:59, with polls closing at 19:00, then I guess it would work. Hell, if you held a gun to my head and had me vote a week early and then blew my brains out, that would probably also keep me from voting again.

So it's not complete, but neither is the current system. You could hold a gun to my loved-ones head and tell me to go vote for B in our current system. I could photograph the ballot from the box, cellphones are small these days. Or if I vote by mail I could easily prove to you I voted for B so you would let the hostage free.

So I guess it actually is an improvement over the status quo.

hm - do random end times solve that particular issue?

You don't need any guns here. Just call your employees and make them vote on their phone in your presense. Also lie that you have people able to see how they voted. Also give them some money so that they feel themselves as accomplice.

There are some voting schemes which protect against vote selling and coercion: https://attejuvonen.fi/thesis

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