
Independent Report on E-voting in Estonia - lelf
https://estoniaevoting.org/
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teddyh
I was, and am still, under the impression that e-voting can _never_ be allowed
in a democratic society, since if it is possible for a voter to in any way
_prove_ which way they voted, it is then possible to pressure people to vote
one way or the other. I.e. if there is _no possible way_ for me to prove I
voted a certain way, there is no possibility for anyone to pressure me to vote
a certain way, since I could always lie and say I voted the way they told me
to when in fact I voted the way I wanted to anyway.

This is also a large part of the reason why votes are secret.

E-voting must therefore never be allowed; it allows voting to be subject to
outside pressure and would cease to provably reflect the actual will of the
voters.

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patcon
> if it is possible for a voter to in any way prove which way they voted, it
> is then possible to pressure people to vote one way or the other.

Can't deniability be ensured crytographically? I know it can be done cleverly
for paper (there's a great TED talk on it), so I'm unsure why it's impossible
digitally.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_frau...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud?language=en)

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iwwr
It's possible via homomorphic encryption, i.e. a way to manipulate cyphertext
to make some mathematical operations like sums/products or logical comparisons
without revealing the actual secrets. For example, it's possible to compare
two encryptions of two numbers and get an encryption of their sum or to know
which one is larger without knowing either.

However one drawback of such a voting system would be an inability to get
actual vote tallies, only an ordering of the candidates.

There is an older google talk about this delving into more detail.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s)

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patcon
Ah thanks for the video!

