fedmsg for voting?

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Thu Sep 12 09:12:08 UTC 2013


On 09/11/2013 10:05 PM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Ralf Corsepius (rc040203 at freenet.de) said:
>>> - a record of who voted for what has been kept since this feature was
>>> implemented: fedorahosted.org/elections/ticket/30
>>> <http://fedorahosted.org/elections/ticket/30> in 2009.  All election
>>> software that recorded this information has kept the information private.
>>
>> You'd go to jail in Germany, if this SW was used for official elections.
>
> The laws prevent a voter-verifiable trail that their vote was recorded and
> cast for who they intended to cast it for, in case of recounts or similar
> occurences?
Correct.

a) Votes are organized in a way, there is no trail from
"person has voted" to "person's vote".

Usually, this is achieved by voting cards carrying no ID. You present a 
voting register card in the voting office and receive an entirely 
anonymous voting card.

b) All voting registers and voting cards will be destroyed after an 
election has been announce "finalized"/"certified" by officials.


The reason for things being this way is "freedom" and "anonymity" of 
voting, because history has told such ID<->vote pairs "can be abused" 
and because voters, who know such info exists and might be monitored, 
vote differently.

Think about having voted for the SPD or KPD (Socialist or Communist 
Party) under Hitler Germany nor not having voted in the GDR (where 
participating in elections was mandatory and non-voters were facing 
oppression).

> I can see requiring it be purged after results are certified,
This is what is being applied, but I don't know about the details of the 
proceedings.

> but there are
> systems that have required this level of verification be available to voters.
Not in Federal-, State- or County-parliament elections and similar in 
Germany.

Ralf




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