[ExI] voting

[Christian Saucier]

Zero Knowledge Cryptography to the rescue!  The Zcash team has written a nice piece about it: https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks.html

"Zero-knowledge proofs allow one party (the prover) to prove to another (the verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the validity of the statement itself. For example, given the hash of a random number, the prover could convince the verifier that there indeed exists a number with this hash value, without revealing what it is."

This could be applied to the statement "I Voted" or "I Voted for Cthulhu" without having to reveal who you are. 

C. 

On June 13, 2017 9:41:37 PM CDT, SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 12:29 PM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> This biggest problem I see with that [public key encryption] is that
>it's not secret ballot: the
>> election office can see who voted for whom.
>>
>> -Dave
>
>
>Having worked in politics, I can tell you that people really do tend
>to vote party line, especially in bigger races, and are more likely to
>swing in smaller races. Registered political parties are a good
>indicator of big ticket votes.
>
>Potential swing voters are identified by demographic statistics. For
>example, young (18-29) single, never-married women, who are head of
>household, and are registered Republican are the most targeted by the
>Democratic Party as potential swing voters. People will often tell you
>their previous voting history, leading to a reasonable assumption of
>future voting activity.
>
>And I'm not sure how many of you know this, but people often call
>their local party office and specifically ASK who to vote for. If
>you've never experienced that shocking moment, I suggest you
>experience it. It's very depressing.
>
>Also, people will plaster their cars and social media with mention of
>candidates that they will not, or will definitely vote for. Big data
>can draw from a remarkable number of sources and identify fairly
>reliably who people will vote for, often more accurately than people's
>initial thoughts. So even if we did have a truly secret ballot, which
>there really isn't, there are other ways to use data to determine
>fairly accurately who someone voted for.
>
>Statistically speaking, a Republican was likely to win the election,
>as America tends to flip parties for the presidential race. There are
>obvious exceptions, Bush Sr. for example.
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