Re:One pollster’s explanation for why the polls got it wrong
by hinkley on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @12:30PM
(#25060468)
When I was younger and just becoming politically aware, I recall stories of people confessing that they told their family they voted one way when in fact they voted another.
There are very few consequences for dissembling, lots of consequences for being transparent, and in fact the ability to lie about your vote is essentially built into our current voting mechanism as a right. I dabbled in electronic voting for a bit, and the open source folks were struggling with this quality. Being able to disavow an act is called 'repudiation', and many crypto systems have nonrepudiation as a feature. But you also need to prevent ballot box stuffing, so you need a way to assert that John Smith voted, but not who he voted for.
But keeping this feature means that anyone with an IQ above 80 can't be coerced or bribed into voting for a particular person. You give me $200, blackmail, extort, or otherwise encourage me very strongly to vote for Hitler, but I can just vote Ficus and tell you I voted Hitler.
Some rando walking up to you after voting, or worse, before, how do I know they're asking in earnest instead of with some agenda? I'll say anything I can think of to get away from them as fast as possible.
There are very few consequences for dissembling, lots of consequences for being transparent, and in fact the ability to lie about your vote is essentially built into our current voting mechanism as a right. I dabbled in electronic voting for a bit, and the open source folks were struggling with this quality. Being able to disavow an act is called 'repudiation', and many crypto systems have nonrepudiation as a feature. But you also need to prevent ballot box stuffing, so you need a way to assert that John Smith voted, but not who he voted for.
But keeping this feature means that anyone with an IQ above 80 can't be coerced or bribed into voting for a particular person. You give me $200, blackmail, extort, or otherwise encourage me very strongly to vote for Hitler, but I can just vote Ficus and tell you I voted Hitler.
Some rando walking up to you after voting, or worse, before, how do I know they're asking in earnest instead of with some agenda? I'll say anything I can think of to get away from them as fast as possible.