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you should be able to vote :
- anytime
- for anyone in the country that have full citizen rights
- electronically - privately using your private key signed and acknowledged by gov
- over whole period you can change your vote anytime
- counting votes and reset should be every 4 - 5 years depending on terms
- before counting votes everyone should get notification one month, one week, one day before and only if you didn't vote hour, 15 minutes before counting
- if you didn't vote your voting account should be disabled and removed from pool until you pay the fine to bring it back.
that's all, let's bring the voting to 21st century lol
This is inconsistent with the preservation of democracy, as it allows a third party to confirm exactly who you voted for, and reimburse or punish you for it.
Mainly you'll have to tweak point 3, to use existing E2E.verified voting approaches which are only tangentially related to asymmetric encryption (and private keys).
We might use asymmetric encryption and private keys for some parts of identity verification, but you wouldn't sign your ballot with it.
This is just the problem between the chair and keyboard how to implement the rest of encryption to enforce anonymity of the vote.
My point was that you can't do symetric key efficiently when you don't have assymetric key confirmed by both parties.
I agree that for example you can vote anonymously just by using dedicated software on your computer that will identify you and then sign and encrypt payload that you can send anonymously from wherever you want - even from the moon. Just make sure we don't include any metadata in signed and encrypted file.
And actually I am missing point 8
- All software dedicated to this process must be open source
This is just the problem between the chair and keyboard how to implement the rest of encryption to enforce anonymity of the vote
That's not what that phrase means. Ensuring anonymity requires a fundamentally different process than signing with an asymmetric key -- involving zero-knowledge proofs, a separate theory from cryptography. A PEBCAK would be when the process is correct and unchanged, but the human (in the chair, at the keyboard) does something contrary (or otherwise inconsistent) with the process.
And yes, the software must be distributed consistent with the OSI's definition of open source. (Or consistent with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which are older but substantially the same, even if it is not packaged for Debian.)
Point 7 is straight-up an unconstitutional poll tax. So is putting the key on the drivers license as another person commented unless we're giving them to people for free without requiring a drivers test...at that point it basically stops being a drivers license and becomes a voter id card which negates the benefit of using the drivers license to begin with.
I also don't know of any PKI implementation that provides the necessary trust services AND anonymity. Not to mention, it needs to be something even the elderly, disabled, poor, and technically challenged need to be able to access as well. Good luck walking grandma through OCSP. We haven't been able to secure our current CAs well enough, and a distributed system would be too open to fraudulent key issuance. I'd love the personal convenience if there were a digital OPTION for voting, but I can't say I'd inherently trust the system, which is a pretty big deal. Honestly, I think the current system works as well as any other I can imagine WHEN IT IS ADMINISTERED IN GOOD FAITH. A combo of in-person, mail-in, and ballot-drop boxes with a generous early voting window. When we start shutting down polling places, closing drop boxes, requiring missing work to vote on a weekday when lines can be 8-12 hours long or tying voting to an ID that isn't equitably available are the problems.
Sauce: I'm a software engineer, and I've been a poll worker for the last several years.
I'm with you almost 100% but add mandatory enrollment, and change the fine to be if you didn't vote. Even voting none of the above across the board should count as voting though.
Make enrollment automatic when you update your license when you turn 18, and store your key in your license with an NFC chip or something, so people don't lose it. And maybe instead of a fine, do a tax credit or some other kind of bonus if you do vote. I think this is one of those situations where the carrot works better than the stick.
This all requires the government to be technically competent and move their technologies into the 21st century, which unfortunately means none of this will happen this century lol.
Actually I was thinking about it if we want the post vote - "no vote you pay now", or pre vote - "If you want to vote now pay if you didn't vote last time" and I'd say maybe someone doesn't care about where he lives and how he lives. Why punish those people who don't want to make those decisions. Why punish people who are mentally disabled and are not voting. Voting should be totally optional, if you don't feel mentally responsible for voting, don't vote. And by the way voting should be difficult so you vote intentionally but also accessible so you can vote anytime you want.
I have questions.
What do you mean any time? What do you mean over the whole period and change your vote any time?
You seem to be suggesting that we'd vote for a government on (say) the 1st of May 2024, then if the 100 votes that made up the majority by which the government was elected changed their mind on the 5th of May 2024 they could cast a new vote and the government should change on the 6th of May 2024.
Now I am all for active democracy and getting people more involved (despite what I might have said about corrupt politicians and so on), but I think some sort of stability is necessary to run a country. Having a new government every two days......... that won't work.