Constitutional Amendment to Allow a Secret Ballot

[Gabu]

Although the bill that went with this amendment allows one to vote either with a secret ballot or by public post, there are many who are urging this amendment's passage so that a mandatory secret voting system is eventually implemented.

So?  Those people have all but dropped their ideas after realizing that the public doesn't want a mandatory secret ballot.  It seems to me that voting against this amendment purely because it might lead to a mandatory secret ballot (which is not at all likely) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I find this legislation well-written and the best plan possible to implement a secret ballot, but I have major concerns with putting a small committee in charge of tabulating and posting ballots. What I'm interested in is whether it is possible for one of our programming whizzes to make a website where a vote can be cast by a voter, the IP is logged along with the ballot, and at the end, ballots are posted with the IP Address and votes on them. Is anything like this possible?

Have you seen the bill intended to accompany this amendment in which I lay out my proposed procedure for how a secret ballot can be run (the stuff about ballot IDs)?  It's the best compromise I can think of between security and transparency.  I personally think that posting all of the voters' IP addresses would probably not be a good idea, given how uncomfortable some posters were at even the thought of simply letting the moderators see the IP addresses.

Also, using the IP address to attach a ballot with its voter would let both John Ford and Gustaf know exactly which ballot goes with which voter, which would essentially completely compromise the security of the secret ballot.

[Gabu]

I couldn't care less if someone knows who voted for who. The only reason I could support a secret ballot is to remove tactical voting from the picture. If anyone is whining about people seeing their vote on an internet sim, the can go eat bees.

Well, other people are concerned about that, and I took their concerns into consideration.  If you don't think that a secret ballot should protect the voters' identities, then that will be a point on which we'll have to simply disagree.

As I said, the ballot ID is good, but I still don't trust whoever is counting the ballots, especially since many voters vote and don't pay attention afterwards.

Where does trust come into play?  The SoFA has to post all of the votes in a public topic; will the voters really not have the time to take all of a minute out of their day to check to see if their vote is present?

Besides, how is the IP address thing any different from an ID?  Both would require the voter to check and make sure that their vote is present.

[Gabu]

The moderator would check the IPs in the best case scenario.

Well, first, that sounds like an awful lot of extra work for John Ford, although I don't know whether or not he would be okay with that.

Second, I don't see how this would verify that all of the votes were valid.

Where does trust come into play?  The SoFA has to post all of the votes in a public topic; will the voters really not have the time to take all of a minute out of their day to check to see if their vote is present?

You, Ebowed and I most probably would, but its not voters like me that I am principally concerned about here. My principal concern is voters like Smash255 or others who rarely participate in the fantasy elections. Any smart SoFA who wanted to rig it would calculate that it is much less likely that Smash would check, and might then alter his vote to rig the election.

Of course, we already held an enquiry into this, came to exactly that conclusion, and decided that it would be best if we weren't putting so much potential for fraud into the hands of one man. Of course you were a member of that commission, so you know all about that.

I suppose you have a point, although it would require a lot more work for the SoFA, given that he would have to notify the other two people of everything that he needs to do (such as appending a letter to the end of an ID, etc.).  There is always a trade-off between ease of use and security.

[Gabu]

Please read the Report that actually thought long and hard about how to make this work, especially noting a carefully crafted Amendment.

I gotta say, Peter's amendment seems quite reasonable to me.  Given that most of this debate has already been mulled over by the commission, I urge the senate to read the report.

I read it thoroughly; I just felt that having three people handling the votes would require too much work if we go with the ID thing because the SoFA would have to make sure that the other two people are up-to-date about anything that he has done (such as appending a letter to the ID).  I felt that, given that this is just fantasy, sacrificing a little security to get better ease of use would be fine.  However, if enough people disagree, I can certainly rewrite it to include that.

[Gabu]

No.  The amendment merely allows the Senate to decide between three choices of voting that it can implement:

• Public ballot;
• Mandatory secret ballot;
• A combination of both, or allowing the voters to choose which.

All three systems would be legal under the amendment's wording.  It would need to be reworded to ensure that a mandatory secret ballot would not be legal, though I have been unable to write a suitable amendment to the amendment that takes care of this.

Okay, how about we change "or" to "and"?  I think it will be quite clear under that wording that both systems must be available.

[Gabu]

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This amendment seems awfully wordy; I don't immediately see what it covers that my amendment doesn't, although that may be because I'm not really sure what section 2 is saying, exactly.

[Gabu]

This amendment seems awfully wordy; I don't immediately see what it covers that my amendment doesn't, although that may be because I'm not really sure what section 2 is saying, exactly.

Section 2 forbids the usage of anonymous polls. For example, if we adopt this version, it would be unconstitutional to use the polling feature of the Atlas Forum to determine presidential elections.

I think that forbidding the use of polls is a very good idea. Anyone--even those who are not qualified--could potentially vote in a poll. There must be some system to check that only registered voters are actually voting, but this is impossible if we have an anonymous poll.

Okay, then we have two changes to make to the current amendment:

1. To change "or" to "and".
2. To insert "non-anonymous" before "secret ballot".

It seems to me that the amendment I quoted would not prohibit a mandatory secret ballot, and rather, would allow elections to be done however we feel like it, as long as it's not anonymous.

[Gabu]

Changing the amendment wording from "or" to "and" would render our current system entirely unconstitutional immediately upon the ratification of the amendment.  We would need to hurriedly pass whatever the first optional Secret Ballot bill proposed is (which conveniently happens to be yours'), with little debate or changing in order to get a constitutional system as soon as possible.

Good point.  It would be easy enough to simply add on a thing at the end of the amendment saying that the amendment will not come into force until a bill replacing the current electoral system is passed.

I don't appreciate the implication that I had some deep, scheming motive behind my oversight of this point, as there was none.

[Gabu]

Okay, here's the official version of the amendment, unless someone can find something else that should be added:

Definitions

Non-anonymous secret ballot: any form of ballot where each vote made can be directly linked to a specific voter, but where the link is not known to the general public.

§1. The text "All elections to the Senate shall be by public post." in Article I, Section 4, Clause 6 of the constitution is hereby stricken and replaced with "All elections to the Senate shall be by both public post and non-anonymous secret ballot, from which options a voter may choose one or the other, but not both."

§2. The text "All elections to the Presidency shall be by public post." in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the constitution is hereby stricken and replaced with "All elections to the Presidency shall be by both public post and non-anonymous secret ballot, from which options a voter may choose one or the other, but not both."

§3. Following ratification by the regions, this amendment shall be considered ineffectual until federal legislation is passed that explicitly declares that this amendment shall come into power.

[Gabu]

add in a section directing exactly what "non-anonymous secret ballot" means for future reference.

Yeah, I was thinking about that.  I'll go do that right now.

[Gabu]

Please specify that the legislation is federal, if only for my sanity.

Picky, picky.

Done.

So are we having a vote or what? And I don't really get what Peter means.

Peter was referring to section 3 and my reference to "legislation".

Okay, here's the official version of the amendment, unless someone can find something else that should be added:

Definitions

Non-anonymous secret ballot: any form of ballot where each vote made can be directly linked to a specific voter, but where the link is not known to the general public.

§1. The text "All elections to the Senate shall be by public post." in Article I, Section 4, Clause 6 of the constitution is hereby stricken and replaced with "All elections to the Senate shall be by either public post or non-anonymous secret ballot."

§2. The text "All elections to the Presidency shall be by public post." in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the constitution is hereby stricken and replaced with "All elections to the Presidency shall be by either public post or non-anonymous secret ballot."

§3. Following ratification by the regions, this amendment shall be considered ineffectual until legislation is passed that explicitly declares that this amendment shall come into power.

change the words in bold and i can go for this.

Why would you prefer it to say "either/or"?  Ebowed expressed the concern that this could lead to mandatory secret ballots.

[Gabu]

The way you have it does just that.

How does it do that?

The amendment that I posted above states that elections will be done through both public post and non-anonymous secret ballot.  It seems pretty clear to me that this means that both options will be available...

I'm not sure where we are in the debate, but I'd like to remind the Senate (perhaps belatedly) that obfuscation of IP addresses is not difficult.

True, but this is not the place to debate that point.  This is just the amendment that will clear the way for a secret ballot; the actual specifics of the methodology used will come later.

[Gabu]

The point i'm trying to make is that the way it is worded can be taken to mean you mustuse both methods

But it says elections will be held using those methods.  It says nothing about what voters must do.

If you change it to either/or, it seems to me that this implies that some elections can be done using only one or the other.

[Gabu]

how about adding, 'at the preference of the individual voter' to the end, just to make it completely obvious?

I added something along those lines.  I weep for our nation in light of the fact that this could potentially be necessary, but I did it.

As long as this is being discussed, could someone please point me to an explanation of the voter ID numbers former SoFA ilikeverin had been recording?

I can make one right now; that would probably be easier.

The idea is to have an ID number attached to each ballot, assigned by the SoFA, beginning with zero and incrementing with each ballot.  After the SoFA assigns a ballot an ID number, the SoFA will PM the ID number to the voter.  Following the election, all secret ballots will be posted, listed by ID number.  Each voter can then check the list of ballots to ensure that his was properly counted.

Basically, it's a way to make it so each voter can ensure that his vote was properly included in the final tally.

[Gabu]

Using a random number generator, I have assigned a new 4-digit ID number to each currently-registered voter.  I will keep these secret until such time as they are needed if a secret ballot is ever allowed.

Isn't that making things more complicated than they need to be?  My intention was to just start at zero and go up by one each time a ballot comes in.  Given that no one will have any clue who voted or in what order they voted, a given number would have no public connection to any specific voter.

The counter would reset with each election, given that there's no real reason not to do so.

EDIT: Oops, my bad, I forgot what I had written.  I have it so that the numbers begin at 100000, not zero, but the idea is the basically the same regardless.

[Gabu]

I would suggest picking a random number to start with. If you have 1000001, you know you are first. If the first number was random, you would not know how many people voted before you.

I'm not seeing what the problem is with having it possible for people to know how many people voted prior to that person's vote.  Could that somehow compromise the security of the secret ballot?

[Gabu]

So, uh, can we get a vote on the amendment, or something?

[Gabu]

Er, wait, is this a vote on the original amendment, or on the amended amendment at the top of page 4?

[Gabu]

Well I would kind of like to know what's been called to a vote; I apologize if I'm holding things up by not wanting to vote on an unknown object.

[Gabu]

Er, wait, is this a vote on the original amendment, or on the amended amendment at the top of page 4?

Amendment to the amendment. I think... not sure if everyone else does. This thread's got me seriously confused to be honest...

Well, if that's what we're voting for, then aye.

[Gabu]

Given that it was my amendment, I think we can just apply the changes that I detailed at the top of page 4 without needing to vote on it; therefore, I believe the vote is on the amendment as it stands at the top of page 4.

But I'm not sure that others are as clear on it.

[Gabu]

I think we need a new vote in which it's specified what we're voting for.

[Gabu]

Just to note: since it was my amendment initially, voting on my proposed change to it is not necessary; I believe we can just skip that part and voted on the altered version directly.

[Gabu]

I thought that was the idea.

[Gabu]

Aye.