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Comment by goostavos | Hacker News Reader

I was not the best civics student.. What is the significance of it being secret? Being able to verify your vote seems like a pretty simple, good thing ( I would think ).

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> What is the significance of it being secret?

So that people can't bribe or blackmail you into voting a particular way.

Or rather, it makes the purchase of votes much less attractive.

Someone can give you money to vote for a specific candidate and verify that you voted correctly via the confirmation code.

So say if some party were to gain power and start harassing people that voted for the other party...

If this is the reason, there is a bigger problem in America then simple voter fraud...

There are all sorts of laws that protect us from various government abuses, such as requiring search warrants, trial by jury, freedom of speech, etc. Voter secrecy is a prudent safeguard along those same lines.

Ever dealt with a union election? That's exactly the problem with non secret ballots. You vote against unionization and thugs show up at your house. Union activists are among the most violent people around.

Gosh. Ever dealt with a union election? That's exactly the problem with non secret ballots. You vote for unionization and libertarians show up at your house. Libertarians are among the most violent people around.

Perhaps you know libertarians that I don't.

The ones I know are well armed, but about as non-violent as you can be and not be a Quaker.

Just to make it clear: This was sarcasm. I never have dealt with armed libertarians beating somebody up because he supported unionization.

The point is: Neither has he encountered union thugs beating somebody up because he was against unionization. It's a ridiculous myth.

I missed the sarcasm at first - my bad!

But I don't know about 'union thug' being a myth: lots of actual violence back in the dark days of the last century. Carnegie brought in an army to bust up the union and it wasn't because they were meek lambs.

> This was sarcasm

No, it was irony.

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

You could make your point without rabid partisanism. There is violence on all sides of unionization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence

In Spain in 1936 the Francoists shot a proportion of people on the voter lists of the Government Parties.

The short answer is you can buy votes then. If you can prove to me who you voted for, I'll give you $5 or whatever.

Which is trivially easy with the availability of camera-phones (just include your ID in the shot).

I know it's not foolproof as you could request a new ballot, but I'm guessing those buying votes aren't the smartest folk. Plus you'd be crazy to not accept the money upfront, as there's no way they're actually going to pay out after the fact and it's not like you can take someone to court for not upholding their end of an illegal bargain.

What you're buying isn't a vote, but a receipt. What if we could increase the supply of valid receipts enough to make them effectively worthless?

For example, voting machines could drop duplicate receipts into a bucket that voters are free to rummage around in.

Or just not have receipts and avoid the issue altogether.

Sure, but there's a benefit to receipts: you can verify that your vote was counted correctly.

Well, you can verify that the receipt says your vote was counted correctly. That assumes you both trust the receipt system and believe that whatever tampering was done to cause your Obama vote to become a Romney vote couldn't have possibly also resulted in the receipt providing incorrect information as well.

Ideally, I think the complete list of votes (with receipt confirmation numbers, but no names, obviously) would be available for inspection.

How would you tell the difference between a valid and invalid receipt when the voter came to verify it?

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