Re: Yes to Publicity! Not to Anonimity! Was: Re: GNOME Foundation Annual Elections - proposal

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 11:38:22AM -0700, Aleksey Sanin wrote:
> >Please give an EXPLICIT scenario of the proposed system where an abuse is 
> >possible in such a way where it is not possible with the system as it was 
> >done a year ago.
> >
> As far as I can understand, the board is going to vote for anonymous 
> voting *without*
> presenting the actual voting scheme (at least I've not seen one 
> published in this list).

I've seen one.  Let me give it to you explicitly:

The voting software assigns each user a unique key, each key is numbered,
say you get the key:

  0276837cf8a68b03adba58ab510187c3309

First 3 digits are the number of your key.  Now you send your vote with this
key to voting software.  When the votes are counted, the results are
published with this key instead of your name.  So you can check your vote.

Nothing changes except that name is replaced by this key (voter-id),
which no one but you knows.

> However, non-voted John Smith might open these two pages and look at 
> them. But unless
> he would bother to go and find out what was his voter id, he would never 
> find out that
> there is a fraud.  Now compare this with the situation today. John Smith 
> who did not
> vote *might* be  curious on how other people have voted. He opens the 
> page and
> *immidiately* see that someone voted from his name. Not mention John's 
> friend Jack
> who migh be curios why John have voted for candidate A when John always 
> said he
> that he does not like candidate A.

You are assuming that someone who didn't vote cared enough to check the
specific votes.  Note that there are 350 members.  If I care enough to look
at this very long list I'd probably care enough to check my own voter-id /
key.

Most people don't even check the exact results, they just check the
posted totals AFAIK.

BTW, list of people who voted would be public, so a third party might mail
all of them to tell them that they have voted and to check their vote (the
reason this would be a third party is that you are obviously not trusting
the first party that published the list).

> Please, remember that we are not talking about perfect system. Any 
> system could be
> hacked and usually not in a way you might think of. The simple and open 
> system
> always have benefits between a closed system with secrects and "special" 
> people
> "in control".

I actually have a system in mind which is safe, or at least requires a large
conspiracy.  I may post in a separate mail about this, though it seems
impractical for the foundation.

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   She had lost the art of conversation, 
   but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
                       -- George Bernard Shaw