Comment Voting needs to be transparent (Score 5, Interesting) 207
Here is the solution to all voting problems.
Goals:
1. Confirm your vote is collected correctly.
2. Try to assure the people that no votes were added.
3. Don't hide results.
4. Keep votes anonymous.
Solution:
1. Keep a large public vote database.
2. Be able to Look up votes by voter id, county, polling location and time.
3. Keep large visible clock and voter count at each polling station. Every time a person goes into the voting room, the count goes up. Voter counts can be confirmed online. Maybe even in a graph over time.
The voter should be able to go online and see his own vote. Since every voter can see every vote counted up in every polling location in the country and know that everyone else can, they'll be assured of the results. If they're paranoid, they can watch their local polling station's voter count and confirm the published results don't have added votes.
Note: Maybe instead of voter id's, it should be a random confirmation code thats generated on the spot. That should be even more anonymous.
Problems: Some people actually vote for the wrong person on accident. That's unfortunate, but the solution isn't to hide it from them.
If vote online doesn't match your vote, have a dispute process. Keep track of dispute counts over time, for the public to see.