John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Anyone have a solution for preventing voter fraud while protecting the
> privacy of individual votes?

You mean, aside from the classical pen, paper, envelope & ballot box approach?

None yet that I ever heard of; doesn't necessarily mean that it's impossible
though; even if it was, an acceptable trade-off might still exist.

SmartCard (or "SmartToken") approaches might allow for feasible solutions. For
example, a microchip could be integrated into ID cards (technology seems to be
heading toward this anyway), that at elections could store a digest of the vote
cast, while the election computer would store some other relevant digest.
I wouldn't be too surprised if cryptography found a set of meaningful digests
that would allow a vote to be verified later without being disclosed.

For example, I know of a protocol that allow for "documents" (like an
"electronic ballot" for example) to be digitally signed without their contents
being disclosed to the signer (through an envelope so to speak). In case you
are curious, I can dig up the details. There are quite some amazing things you
can do with cryptography (and quite some amazing ways to foul up or work around
;))

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