[endgame]

There are some really clever systems that let you prove that you voted without leaking how you voted.

Unfortunately, explaining them to Joe Q. Public in such a way that he's going to trust your election is a very tough sell, whereas counting paper is a much easier process to explain.

And that's before you begin worrying that the developer of your whizz-bang mathematically-provable voting system is a) going to win the bid to build it for the government, b) implements it correctly, and c) isn't subverted while doing so.

[croon]

I have had this discussion many times before, with people smarter than me, and I have not yet reached a counter argument to the idea that if you can only prove that you voted (and not couple each vote to a voter), how can you prove that innumerable votes were added to the record, or that your vote is correct?

You can either couple every vote to a voter and risk oppressive monitoring of votes at scale or coercion at micro level, OR you can have decoupled voting proving that your vote was counted, but not have convincing proof that your vote or anyone else's are accurate.

Please prove me wrong because I would love it if it was possible.

Edit: Booth/paper-voting solves this by:

* linearly scaling cost of multi-party verification of identity at time of voting

* your vote being anonymous and being decoupled from you at time of deposit

* you trust the system at scale since each step in the chain-of-custody has many-eyes-verification

* vote amount is grouped by location so vote insertion can't happen at scale without coordinating with each involved polling place to fudge each of their numbers

* you can't insert into one area without having a random 100k population increase in a polling place overnight

[rstuart4133]

You could try reading the Wikipedia article on the end to end voter veritable system called Prêt à Voter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%AAt_%C3%A0_Voter It's not that hard to grok how it works because there is no complicated math involved.

It allows any voter to verify their vote was accurately recorded in the reported total. The usual argument against is you need a lot of people to verify, and most won't. That's probably true when everyone is confident in the outcome, but I'm not so sure it works be true if there was a wiff of fraud in the air.

> how can you prove that innumerable votes were added to the record, or that your vote is correct?

In Australia it's easy to prove no votes to the record because everyone on the rolls must vote, or they get fined. Ergo total votes must equal the number of people on the roll minus the number fined. As for "your vote was counted" - read the Wikipedia article. These systems do prove that, while keeping your ballot secret.