Checked Elections

baltinfo.ru

In connection with the well-known events, I thought about how to exclude from life the possibility of juggling the results of any vote in principle.

I see two options: the vote should be either open or secret, but with the possibility of verifying the results. Regarding the first, I think that it’s not particularly necessary to explain anything - it’s like voting in the LJ, where you can always see who voted and therefore it just doesn’t make sense to fake it - the risks are too high.

But the mechanism for organizing a verified vote, in my opinion, is a more interesting topic for discussion. Under the cut, I will present my idea and questions that arose along the way.

Disclaimer.Habr is an apolitical resource, therefore the questions “who needs it” and “how to translate it into reality” are not discussed in this topic. I ask you to consider this as a case that needs to be solved within the framework of the general topic of designing an electronic state.

My suggestion on organizing a verifiable vote is as follows: introduce a division of entities into 1) the results of the voter’s vote and 2) the results of the vote count.

In both cases, this data must be stored in encrypted form, and will be available only once by the "keys" specified by the voter himself - separately for each result. The vote counting system will only have access to general, anonymized data. After each data check, the key will be set again to ensure that no one pokes their nose in without your knowledge.

Anyone can compare the results of their voting and the vote that is recorded for him in the vote counting system. These results can be unloaded at will, for example, to provide them with an independent recount.

Questions

First question: two keys - is it enough or redundant (can you do one?)

Second question: how to organize the generation and storage of these keys? Should they be set by the user or can be generated by the system? Should they be remembered as a PIN of a bank card or can be sent to mail / phone?

The third question: how to protect yourself from unscrupulous voters who can use the key once, and then claim that their account has been hacked and accuse the election commission of fraud?

Voting process

Of course, with such an "electrification" of elections, they can be held not only at polling stations. Strictly speaking, they can simply be carried out completely online - using the database of the same public services portal (at least some will be useful from him :). And polling stations can be left only for people who are fundamentally offline - pensioners, for example, who will vote using special terminals.

the effect

Legality. The scale of falsifications will decrease - simply due to their verifiability, the risks of “stuffing” will increase.

Increase turnout. It is likely that when voting online, “turnout” will increase - the number of voters. Although some sacredness of this process will be lost, in our time, convenience and speed, I think, are still more important.

Economical effect. Firstly, 50 million people use the Internet in Russia, only 110 registered voters. Thus, it is possible to reduce the number of polling stations by at least 30-40%. Secondly, the process of manual vote counting is canceled - the most time-consuming and time-consuming. All costs will be associated only with the administration of the system.

PS

It would be interesting to calculate the cost of developing and implementing such a system in order to compare it with the announced fourteen billion rubles (almost half a billion dollars, just a minute) for the implementation of web-cameras at polling stations as a measure to counter fraud.

UPD A very interesting presentation on the TED.com portal: www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud.html (the content part starts at 3:50, there are Russian subtitles).

The proposed mechanism differs from mine for the better: the number of entities is reduced, the key to confirm the voting results is not needed - its function is carried out by the ballot. And the role of the second key, as I understood from the prese, performs the QR code on the newsletter. The downside is that this is a purely offline voting option. But the idea looks very beautiful. You can supplement it with the ability to independently scan the newsletter (with an appeal to IR employees only if necessary - an option for grandmothers).