Comment by thaumasiotes
4 hours ago
> Example A: You vote for candidate A, but software changes to candidate B and software displays that you voted for candidate A. At any later time you can check with an independent device and look at the transaction finding out that it was altered with and retract your vote / change it.
This seems to make a pretty dramatic change to the election protocol, no?
Consider example A': You vote for candidate A, but later realize that you hate candidate A. You repudiate your recorded vote for candidate A.
What should happen?
How much later? Cryptographic systems certainly have methods for allowing revoting up to a deadline, but endlessly mutable voting is insane. It's also not really any different from today. I can say I didn't vote for candidate A 12 months after the upcoming election and it means... well... nothing.
You can do A' in some US states... you can vote by mail/early vote, and then later request they spoil that ballot and do it again, or by voting on election day the mail-in is invalidated.
The US voting system is probably not a good starting point for modeling such systems :)
There is no "US voting system". Each of the 50 States have their own systems, often several systems, and where there are several systems it's the counties that pick a system that suits them.
I'm confused. Can you explain the exact issues created by this repudiation system practiced by US states? Maybe there's a real issue that hasn't been addressed that I am unaware of.
Or is this a knee-jerk America Bad?