First off, there have been many implementations of various forms of secret ballots on Ethereum using zero knowledge proofs. Mix and match your feature set of who can verify what and when, and there's a zero knowledge scheme that can do it.

Second, coercion has been rolled out as an excuse to disenfranchise voters for ages with no evidence that it's a real threat in the modern era. I live in Oregon, which has been doing mail in voting since the 70s. People argue all the time that mail in voting will lead to coercion, but it has literally never happened in Oregon.

Also, voter rolls are public information. I like collecting data, so I have voter rolls of most states, which often allows me to look up name, home address, phone number, and registered party of anyone who is registered to vote. A lot of states even have parts of voting history publicly available. It's super easy for any employer to figure out what party any employee is in, and exactly which candidates that they've donated money to, etc, yet coercion still isn't a thing.

If you look at the pure economics of coercion, it's pretty obvious why it isn't a thing. It just doesn't scale. Every person that gets added under a coercion scheme make it that much more likely that the person running the scheme is going to go to jail for the rest of their life. No one cares so much about politics that they're going to throw their life away for the potential of changing 5 or so votes.

> First off, there have been many implementations of various forms of secret ballots on Ethereum using zero knowledge proofs. Mix and match your feature set of who can verify what and when, and there's a zero knowledge scheme that can do it.

Yes, no problem with that. But the GP was arguing that it's better if ballots are not secret. I think it's a common misconception that if only all votes were open they would be more democratic.

At a small scale, I've directly witnessed people who decided not to vote on issues where their vote could be figured out by others, saying they didn't want social consequences of being seen to disagree. I've also known people afraid to vote with their conscience due to reprisals, and I do mean afraid.

> Second, coercion has been rolled out as an excuse to disenfranchise voters for ages with no evidence that it's a real threat in the modern era.

Good point. For the record, I'm pro mail-in voting too, especially during a pandemic. I'm not impressed by those who sought to disenfranchise votes in the USA this time around by arguing that mail-in votes should not be counted after they have been cast in good faith.

The mechanisms we use to protect vote integrity are meant to be a "best we can do" while still allowing people a reasonable way to actually vote. As soon as people are prevented from voting in the name of "integrity", that's not democracy any more.

Mail-in voting fraud has been found to a notable amount in the UK, though not enough to swing a result. But it did not come from individual homes. It's important to have mechanisms in place to look for it, if only to evaluate that it's not happening to a significant degree. Monitoring mail-in vote integrity should be on the look out for where ballots are posted from, and whether there are collisions with multiple votes from the same persons. If 10,000 votes are detected postmarked from the same employer warehouse with the same handwriting, that's time to be suspicious. When it's from 10,000 individual homes, each marked in a different style, you can be much more confident nobody has the capacity to go around every household to make that happen.

However, back to the technical suggestion of a public verifiable vote. If 10,000 people vote privately and then someone they have a commercial relationship with asks for proof they voted a particular way before they get a discount or whatever, that swings it from "nobody can visit every household" back to "systematic pressure is realistic", and it's not democracy any more.

> It's super easy for any employer to figure out what party any employee is in, and exactly which candidates that they've donated money to, etc, yet coercion still isn't a thing.

If people choose to announce their party affiliation, that's something else. Nothing stops people choosing to broadcast how they voted either. That's fine.

However in both cases, people are free to vote differently in secret than whatever they are broadcasting or socially going along with.

Polling data suggests there are plenty of people who are reluctant to truthfully say how they vote, even when told the polling is confidential. I'm sure there are people who leave it implied among their social groups that they lean one way, when in private they actually vote another way.

I'm a Judge of Elections in Pennsylvania, USA.

You write: > If people choose to announce their party affiliation, that's something else.

In PA (as in most states) one's party affiliation is public by law. In PA it's important because one can only vote in the primary for the party one is registered as a member of. (Voters who do not register an affiliation or are affiliated with a third party simply aren't allowed to vote during the primary.) So it's not really a case of "choosing" to announce their affiliation.

Also, I know multiple individuals in my neighborhood who have confided in me that they registered as members of one party but preferred to vote for the other party. Why? Because (at least historically) our county has a long history of being run by a single party and (to quote my neighbor), "If you are a member of the wrong party your trash won't get picked up."

The secret ballot really DOES prevent certain abuses.

I must admit, the notion of being "in" a party in a way an employer can easily check, or party affiliation that is legally registered, is outside my experience. By affiliation I meant only the party a person tells other people they support, in a non-binding social sense. I'm not in the USA.

I agree, where affiliation with a party has greater meaning and consequences, and is practically required for access to ordinary local services, the secret ballot is even more important.

That neighbourhood is a great example.

I'm disappointed, really, that in 21st century USA those people are still disenfranchised by local politics from voting in the primary of the party they actually support. But presumably there are good reasons for legal registration.

To be fair, even if you register for the opposing party, helping to choose the opponent is still useful. I've considered such plays before.

> And no cameras in the voting booth.

Even with cameras in the voting booth, voters still have plausible deniability because they can spoil their marked ballot (that they may have photographed) and request a fresh blank one.

In-person paper voting is pretty much the best voting method we have in terms of privacy, usability, scrutability, and reliability.

Isn't that already a risk though? I vote remotely by mail, you could coerce me to vote for something specific and even send the mail yourself if you want to be sure.

There is a difference between active coercion (someone goes to your house and forces you with a gun to vote their way) and passive coercion (if you vote for X in 20 years time your vote might be considered inappropriate and you will be fired from your job).

What about if in 20 years your social media comment was considered inappropriate? For this example let's say it was in a "private" forum but political in nature, would that also be an act of passive coercion to silence a political viewpoint?

Eg: We need to make a list of all his enablers before they delete their posts...

Isn't this more about whom I trust less, the politicians or a third party (that might as well be the politicians)?

If so, why is it in the state's power to decree that we have to trust the politicians but not the 3rd parties?

No it is isn't. Secret ballots aren't about whether you trust those administering the election, although that's a factor.

They are to let you vote as you privately decide with safety from everyone who has an interest in the vote, whether that's third parties, your boss, insurance company, local mafia, etc., or the state.

The state's role, in a democracy, is to ensure state-level elections take place with the various ingredients that ensure it has high integrity. That requires a lot of things; a lot of resources, making sure everyone knows about it, making it clear the result will be respected by the state itself, acting as a coordination point with some kind of authority so that people will tend to respect that an election actually took place.

If you have a third party available who can do that, by all means go for it, but generally you don't have one, and if you did you would start calling it the state.

However, in a democracy the electoral process should be administered as separately as possible from the politicians of the day. Politicians of the day should not be getting much involved, other than to ensure it takes place with all the usual resources.

Note that "the state" and "the politicians" are not the same thing in a democracy. The state consists of multiple institutions, many of which do not particularly trust politicians either.

The people most directly involved in actually running it should demonstrate a commitment to the integrity of the election itself foremost, ahead of their personal political views. On the principle that democracy itself is more valuable than winning any particular election, while still being drawn fairly from a range of people. But they should be observed (without interference) at multiple levels by representatives of different political groups.

Making a combination of people, systems and motivations to achieve integrity is the art of institution building (and maintenance), an electoral commission or something like that. Its independence from politicians of the day is one of its key features.

Regardless of who runs it and who you trust, you still need secret ballots to ensure integrity of the result.