Re: anonymous vote security ...

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi George,

On Thu, 2003-09-18 at 17:28, George wrote:
> Supposing there are 20 candidates then by random choice
> the chances are 1/167960 that two particular people will vote the same.

	Right; however emperically this is not so; hence the call for lots of
random candidates; as a matter of interest I just grokked the 2001
election results with my rough hash thing and found:

	ole gnu org == jsk29 cornell edi
	bruce perens com == garrison users sourceforge net [RMS only;-]
	bganslan gmx net == pat gnu org == itp ximian com

	Which I guess is pretty good, a risk of only 3 votes max being lost to
anyone ;-)

> So with those odds, such a 'fix' would occur once in a millenium if it was
> tried every year (given 15 candidates).  And even then your efforts would get
> you one extra vote.

	Perhaps we should investigate if in fact itp != pat; I could have sworn
I'd seen both at once in the same room at Ximian - but perhaps they do
that with mirrors ;-)

> Also note that this is easily prevented if piece of the 'voter-id' is
> supplied by the voter himself.  For example you could have a field on the
> ballot with:

	ah! my point - and expressed so baldly[1].

> But I have to say: WOW, the first actual technical 'issue' suggested, though
> due to the odds of success it's not actually much of a real problem.  But
> the above fix could make people trust it more.

	Quite - I think the scheme is reasonable; and I'm paranoid - so I know
no-one would vote for me if they knew I wouldn't twist their arm about
it later. Still, the thugs whom I pay to beat up people who vote against
me will be out of a job - and most unhappy about it. Perhaps we should
have an open ballot on whether we should adopt a secret ballot to keep
them happy ? [ or a simple show of twisted arms =].

> > 	Or in other words "vote for me" ! ;-)
> 
> Sneaky bastard :)

	I still think this has to be the message; along with "I know where you
live" or something like that ;->

	Regards,

		Michael.

[1] - invest now in my patent hair-loss formula.
-- 
 michael ximian com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot