🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9208172116.AA20035@news.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Marc.Ringuette@daisy.learning.cs.cmu.edu writes:

>Thanks for the pointer, Ken.  His scheme looks good.  Here's a sketch:
>
>  The election takes place between voters and k candidates, at least
>  one of whom is assumed honest.  Each voter communicates with all of
>  the candidates in order to register and vote.  [...]

Ah, if only we could find an honest politician!

- Paul Colley
University:  colley@qucis.queensu.ca
Home:        pacolley@ember.uucp   watmath!ember!pacolley  +1 613 545 3807
"Every now and then, an honest man is sent to the legistlature" (unknown)

In <10370@ember.UUCP> pacolley@ember.UUCP (Paul Colley) says:

> In article <9208172116.AA20035@news.cis.ohio-state.edu>
> Marc.Ringuette@daisy.learning.cs.cmu.edu writes:

> >Thanks for the pointer, Ken.  His scheme looks good.  Here's a sketch:
> >  The election takes place between voters and k candidates, at least
> >  one of whom is assumed honest.  Each voter communicates with all of
> >  the candidates in order to register and vote.  [...]

> Ah, if only we could find an honest politician!

	Whyever for?  Party pooper!
	Graft, loot, spoils, are what politics is all about.
	Politics is the art of managing conflicts of interest.

	Any system that posits honest politicians is bound to fail.

	We should build all system (legal, electoral or otherwise)
	with the premises that human beings are not equally honest
	and that politics will appeal to those who are the least
	honest.  Dishonesty is not a requirement, but it is a big
	motivation for entering politics, as well as a large part
	of the art of surviving in it.

	A public key system has the benefit of not relying on
	honesty on anyone's part.



--
 The Vacuum Cleaner Man (reality sucks)

>Thanks for the pointer, Ken.  His scheme looks good.  Here's a sketch:
>
>  The election takes place between voters and k candidates, at least
>  one of whom is assumed honest.  Each voter communicates with all of

One voter or one candidate?  I don't know of any election for an actual
government elected office (student council doesn't count) in which I 
would trust any of the candidates with tallying the election results.

>  the candidates in order to register and vote.  The voter obtains
>  an "eligibility token", prior to election day, signed by all the

In other words, the candidates get to decide who votes (in this case it
appears that one blackball by one candidate denies a voter the right to
vote), by refusing to communicate with them.  The White Supremacy Party
would find it easy to not communicate with certain neighborhoods.

>  candidates.  On election day, the voter submits a vote to each
>  candidate using a zero-knowledge protocol so that they can verify
>  the validity of the vote but not its contents.  To tally results,
>  the candidates must sign and publish their sub-tallies, and (I think)
>  only then can the results be computed.  Correctness and privacy is
>  assured as long as one of the candidates is honest.

This also doesn't seem to address problems with voters double-registering,
voters pretending to be other people who don't usually vote in addition to
themselves, voters using the token of other voters who died between 
registration and the election, and external denial-of-service attacks on 
the voting system.

>One concern I have with Iverson's method is that the protocol stalls
>whenever any of the candidates is unresponsive.  Of course, "candidate"
>may be a misnomer -- perhaps the parties involved should be mutually
>independent watchdog agencies.

Better.

					Gordon L. Burditt
					sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon