indigoboy83

My name: indigoboy83 Website: www.indigoboy83.com I have a new innovative way to set up a vote, that's checkable, and still private: (many more ideas on my website) ----- Here we will create a checkable vote, an election in which all the voters can verify his vote is correctly tabulated with privacy. The vote is to be handled by the officials. Every voter has with him his personal information which comprises of his name, address and anything else the votingstation requires for one to make a vote. ----> We will demonstrate this paper with a running example. Supposing; our voter is named "Santa Claus" and he lives at "The North Pole". That's his personal information. At the time of administrating the vote, a voter will beforehand create a voter's key using a computer program called the key program. This key program uses the voter's personal information, along with the time location of the vote and a voter's password. The voter's password is to be known only to the individual voter; the voter should NEVER be asked to divulge this password unless he realizes that his vote is wrong; it is this password that ensures the secrecy of the ballot, maintaining the election as being private. Before the voter leaves the voting box, he should be *required* to take note of his voter's personal information and his voter's password. ----> Continuing our running example; perhaps the key program will create a voter's key "CGAFTE115", using Santa Claus's private password is "REDredRED". Now, exactly when a voter is administrating his vote, he will have to write down this voter's key on to the ballot itself, along with, of course, his actual vote. The ballot should be put into a voting box. The voter's key on the ballot privately identifies the individual to the ballot. ----> Continuing our running example; out of the possible votes "A", "B", "C", "D", and "E", Santa Claus' actual vote is "B". The voting station will, of course, be required to keep all voting boxes ordered; that is, each box should have with it a name, date, time stamp of the actual station. The voting stations should send their voting boxes to a central location to be tabulated. As one tabulates the votes within these boxes, we will create a list of all votes, which we henceforth call the Big List. The Big List is simply a list of voter's keys along with the actual vote given by that particular voter. The Big List should be put in some sort of order, perhaps alphabetically on the voter's keys. The Big List will be available to everyone in society in its entirety; that is, everyone should be allowed to retain a personal copy of it. Essentially, the Big List is a list of the facts of the vote; and everyone should be able to compare one's individual Big List with someone else's so as to maintain that the facts of the election are agreed upon generally by all of the public. ----> Continuing our running example; our Big List has at its 623 524 entries. Santa Claus' entry is 154 012 entry. It reads "CGAFTE115". (I chose the numbers 623 524 and 154 012 randomly.) The voter's key should be as meaningless as one can create. The reason is so that, from a voter's key, no one can ever determine *any* information whatsoever as to who, where, or when the vote was administered. On the other hand, a voter, on his own, knows the information of who, where and when the vote was administered, and his private password, and can thus verify his vote using his voter's key in the Big List. It is easy for a voter to determine his own personal voter's key from his personal information. It is hard for anyone to determine a voter's personal information (and thus the ballot) from a voter's key; the officials should make this more that "hard", rather, try for impossible. ----> Continuing our running example; There exists another voter, named "the Grinch", whose voter's key is "GHECGR241" and his actual vote is "D". Both voters, Santa Claus and the Grinch have their own copies of the Big List, that are identical. It turns out that in the list, on entry 451 220, there exists the info: "GHECGR241 D". (Again, the number 451 220 was chosen randomly.) Both Santa and the Grinch can compare their copies of the Big List so as to assure they are indeed identical, so that the facts of the vote are agreed upon, and they can check the Big List to verify their votes have been tabulated correctly. Now, supposing *every* voter has retained a copy of the Big List and they personally agree that their own particular vote was tabulated correctly, that is, within the Big List the voter's own actual vote is marked correctly beside the voter's key. Then we have no problems! It was a successful poll! Hurray! The vote is private and yet checkable; the voter can always make sure that his own personal vote is tabulated correctly. On the other hand, suppose some voter, a troubled voter, observes on his copy of the Big List that his own particular vote was misrepresented and not tabulated correctly. What should he do? He should go to the officials and complain! With this problem, the first possible reason for the officials to consider is that this individual's Big List is not in agreement with the ones they have at hand. If this is so then the problem is easily remedied by giving our troubled voter a correct Big List; and then, if his vote was represented correctly then the problem is immediately settled. If not, however, if the officials agree with our troubled voter that our Big Lists are in agreement, then we've got a "pickle". The troubled voter will attest that his vote was incorrectly tabulated. We must remedy this situation somehow. If there is just a few troubled voters then we can simply correct the actual votes for these voters, and everyone will update their Big List with the corrections made. If there is turmoil and lots of troubled voters exists, we may very well have to redo the election.