I did not complain that Jorge was 'not trying hard enough'
Jorge himself stated outright that certain preconceptions that he had - voting from home systems were
a priori bad and wrong (although I am still not sure why he would see this only a a vote-from-home system) had caused him to dismiss this technology out-of-hand, without even examining it at all.
One of the big problems with voting is anonymity. This is required for several important reasons. This means voting from home is not a realistic option (though you are not specifically pushing for that, it is often a wish of many of those who are pushing for e-voting).
I think what would come close to a good system would be where one would enter a booth, cast a vote and that choice would be cryptographically signed, receiving a receipt that would allow one to verify one's vote later. This would require a recording of all votes, potentially on some blockchain type system but not necessarily.
There would also need to be a system in place where one could not be "fobbed off" with a duplicate receipt. I think this is solvable cryptographically though.
One other issue with e-voting is that it becomes fairly easy to subvert anonymity. If the machine timestamps a vote, it becomes more easy to track who voted how.
Unfortunately an issue with the receipt is that that also subverts anonymity. If you can verify your vote, so can someone else.In the end, I think it's a problem without a solution, merely a "best attempt". Unfortunately, current implementations of e-voting are very far from that and tend to suggest a kindergartener's level of understanding of the problem at hand.
Eh, pretty sure that's not correct. I remember reading about a proposal for a vote verification mechanism that doesn't require compromising anonymity. I'll see if I can dig up the article.
Unless of course you work from the premise that the voting machine is compromised / the voter is watched. But in that case, all bets are off anyway, no?
