> I'm not sure I care for the elitist tone in Dan's posting either, but
> he raises some points that deserve serious consideration. Sure we
> have mail-in absentee ballots now, but the number of people who
> choose to vote that way is small and an absentee ballot split that
> varied markedly from the regular vote would certainly stand out.
Actually, speaking as someone who has won a real world election so close it
was decided by absentee ballots, that last part isn't true. Absentee voters
have different demographics from the overall voter population -- they tend to
be older and sicker. The village election here is held in March, and most of
the absentees are older residents who spend the winter in Florida and tend to
be more conservative and more Republican than the rest of the voters. But
it's certainly true that a result markedly at odds with the regular vote
skewed by the predictable biases of the absentees would raise eyebrows.
Nonetheless, the absentee process is deliberately cumbersome and subject to
public inspection to make it hard to spoof. Around here, you have to send in
a paper application with a handwritten signature (unless you're on active
duty in the military in which case you get the absentee ballot
automatically), they send out the absentee ballot, you fill out the ballot,
put it in nested envelopes, sign the outer envelope and mail it back. On the
appointed day, the two commissioners, one from each party, open the
envelopes, display the outer envelopes to everyone present who can challenge
them if the signature looks wrong or otherwise doesn't look right, then they
mechanically shuffle up the paper ballots and count them. The process is
still subject to challenges similar to those for in-person voting, and I
think that it's permissible to contact any voter with a questionable ballot
and ask whether they sent one in.
For the original question, I'd suggest a procedure similar to the one the ACM
uses. They make up a bunch of random numbers with check digits, print them
out, shuffle them up, and mail one printed number to each registered voter.
To vote, you have to enter your number. This provides reasonable real world
security that each voter is a real voter, while each vote is anonymous.
Sorry that this procedure doesn't include any whizzo crypto features.
Regards,
John Levine, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
