All prior crypto-based voting systems I've studied rely on hash collisions, algorithmically simulating the secure one-way hash of physically dropping a ballot into a box, for an individual's ballot to get lost in the herd. But for this to work, ballots have to be simple and elections have to be large (enough).
In the USA, ballots are complicated and precincts are small. Appropriate for elections administration based on the Australian Ballot, bad for crypto-based balloting system.
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I'm very surprised this is the first I've heard about Neff shuffling.
But I know a lot about VoteHere. Even though they are a proven bad actor in this space, I'll suspend disbelief and see if something good came out of their efforts. The Agora people appear smart, earnest. So maybe there's something here.
If Neff shuffling (or something similar) actually works for this application, it'd be remarkable. Least importantly, I'd have to update my world view. Specifically: no fully digital voting system can both protect the secret ballot and ensure a public vote count. (In practice, electronic voting systems do neither.)
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PS- Scanning the other comments, feel compelled to point out:
Design the whole system. Understand election administration. Protecting the ballot is not enough. Information also leaks from poll books, voting history, etc., which then deanonymizes the secret ballot.
For Sierra Leone, Agora might be a great idea. Maybe the benefit of extending the franchise (reduced costs, increasing access) outweighs the loss of individual privacy.
A verifiable secret shuffle and its application to e-voting [2001] https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=502000
All prior crypto-based voting systems I've studied rely on hash collisions, algorithmically simulating the secure one-way hash of physically dropping a ballot into a box, for an individual's ballot to get lost in the herd. But for this to work, ballots have to be simple and elections have to be large (enough).
In the USA, ballots are complicated and precincts are small. Appropriate for elections administration based on the Australian Ballot, bad for crypto-based balloting system.
--
I'm very surprised this is the first I've heard about Neff shuffling.
But I know a lot about VoteHere. Even though they are a proven bad actor in this space, I'll suspend disbelief and see if something good came out of their efforts. The Agora people appear smart, earnest. So maybe there's something here.
If Neff shuffling (or something similar) actually works for this application, it'd be remarkable. Least importantly, I'd have to update my world view. Specifically: no fully digital voting system can both protect the secret ballot and ensure a public vote count. (In practice, electronic voting systems do neither.)
--
PS- Scanning the other comments, feel compelled to point out:
Design the whole system. Understand election administration. Protecting the ballot is not enough. Information also leaks from poll books, voting history, etc., which then deanonymizes the secret ballot.
For Sierra Leone, Agora might be a great idea. Maybe the benefit of extending the franchise (reduced costs, increasing access) outweighs the loss of individual privacy.