Sunday, January 11, 2009

Delegated Democracy - Part 6

I've been working on that idea for an online delegated voting system. Here's what I've got so far:

Three groups
  • The polling authority would be in charge of the voting process, and in this case would be the party.
  • The voter decides which options they like best for a given vote, and either vote on their own or delegate a third party to do it for them.
  • The delegates can be people, computer programs, Google, whatever you want. All that matters is that they've been given authorization to vote on behalf of someone. If you vote on your own, you are your own delegate.
Two types of ballot
  • The blank ballot is effectively your power of attorney with regards to delegating your vote. If you want you can give it to someone else, or you can use it yourself to make filled ballots (see below). It consists of three bundled elements, together encrypted with the polling authority's public key:
  • A filled ballot is what is actually submitted to the polling authority, and it says who you are and how you vote. It consists of three bundled elements, together encrypted with the polling authority's public key:
    • A blank ballot,
    • The vote number, and
    • Ranked options for the vote.
When the polling authority receives a filled ballot, it publishes the rankings and a cryptographic hash of the (blank ballot + vote number). If the username and password are valid, it counts the vote towards the final results, otherwise it is not counted. When polling has closed, the winning options and close runners-up are published.

Since you know what your blank ballot is, you can check how your vote was used once it's published, and if it's different than what you expected due to a security breach, you or your delegate can send an email to the polling authority telling them to blacklist that particular blank ballot.

You'd have to be physically present at the polling authority headquarters when you chose your username and password, but other than that the whole thing could be done online.

Thoughts?

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