While Ranked Pairs sound good in theory, how would you actually sell this method to normal people? Transparency is one of the basic requirements for the acceptability of a vote, and this method will be beyond maybe 70-80% of the American public, if not more.
I don't think using ignorant Americans as a policy standard is going to achieve anything.
Well, a lot of them don't really understand the current system either.
What is important is how are you, as a voter, gonna vote for the person you want to win. In the end, it's either choose one or rank them from top to bottom.
What could be the problem is tallying several million individual votes, let alone putting them into a computer. I wonder what the algorithmic complexity is for this system.
Having a FOSS voting system would enable electronic voting without the baggage. Decentralize the means to certify votes. End to end encryption and anonymization always. If there are groups of people who disagree with the vote, they get separated from the main group and given land and territory of their own. That's how I'd do it.
If its anonymous how do you keep malware from voting for people. Do you also intend to first solve computer security THEN solve government as well? Voting by mail is already reasonably easy to secure.
Just use a blockchain.
This destroys anonymity its a public ledger and how do you imagine that helps security. Your vote is only as secure as your shitty insecure computer.
It's pseudonymous and is the best anonymous voting option we have. They aren't actually tied to people's personal information and you know this. A blockchain will therefore be perfectly fine.
If no electronic option is good enough for you, remember the tyrants of today and yesterday have already mastered rigging the paper ballot and they likely already do have your voting history tabulated in some archive somewhere. If you think blockchains are a security nightmare, then the ID system to tie voters to paper ballots will give you PTSD.
There is no reason to believe that paper ballots aren't securable NOW and no reason to believe we will ever be able to secure electronic voting.
If you want to using cryptography print a challenge on the ballot have them type the number into 90s era flip phone sized device and have them write the response on the ballot. Without understanding anything about crypto they and the government both have half of a key and nobody can fool anyone.
Mathematically impossible to commit fraud based on math that has been given massive attention by a small army of very smart people.
If you can secure paper ballots, then blockchain voting by extension is much more secure.
Especially since blockchain encryption is not only extremely secure, but there is huge financial incentive to not break it, and that psychological barrier is ultimately the important one.
If you vote on your computer how exactly do you keep people's computer from voting for them? How do you keep them from for instance changing the UI so that the graphic for candidate A actually registers a vote for B?
How do you provide a way for user bob to verify he voted for A without also implicitly providing an easy way for him to verify his vote to someone pressuring him to share how he voted either to reward him for voting how that party pleases or to punish him for voting "incorrectly".
How do you provide a way to audit the vote without being able to see how people voted? If you do as you must have a database of ids to actual voters how do you keep that from leaking allowing everyone to see how everyone voted? Alternatively maybe it just leaks to whatever party is in control and THEY know how people voted so they can better target people for encouragement or suppression.
Not a single one of these issues is an issue with paper ballots but every one of these is a deal breaker for e-voting and some of them are mathematically unsolvable like it being impossible to have an auditable and secret electronic ballot.
Our current method of voting works and works well. We don't NEED an answer a few days quicker at the expense of totally destroying actual security and secrecy. This is a dumb idea and we are all dumber for having spent time thinking about it.
If you vote with paper, how do you stop unscrupulous people from assuming your identity and voting in your stead? What's to stop vote counters from disposing of your ballot because they claim you filled it out wrong, or didn't fill in the circle all the way, or used the wrong color pen, or any of the other tricks they do?
Anyone can defraud absolutely anything anyone else does, so it's pointless to use fear of fraud or abuse to not do a thing, especially voting where convenience and ease of use is a lot more important anyway.
Voting electronically is an inevitability given technological progress anyway, especially as we move out into space, so arguing about it isn't going to do any good.
The voting system will be the Tideman method
While Ranked Pairs sound good in theory, how would you actually sell this method to normal people? Transparency is one of the basic requirements for the acceptability of a vote, and this method will be beyond maybe 70-80% of the American public, if not more.
I don't think using ignorant Americans as a policy standard is going to achieve anything.
Well, a lot of them don't really understand the current system either.
What is important is how are you, as a voter, gonna vote for the person you want to win. In the end, it's either choose one or rank them from top to bottom.
What could be the problem is tallying several million individual votes, let alone putting them into a computer. I wonder what the algorithmic complexity is for this system.
Having a FOSS voting system would enable electronic voting without the baggage. Decentralize the means to certify votes. End to end encryption and anonymization always. If there are groups of people who disagree with the vote, they get separated from the main group and given land and territory of their own. That's how I'd do it.
If its anonymous how do you keep malware from voting for people. Do you also intend to first solve computer security THEN solve government as well? Voting by mail is already reasonably easy to secure.
Just use a blockchain.
This destroys anonymity its a public ledger and how do you imagine that helps security. Your vote is only as secure as your shitty insecure computer.
It's pseudonymous and is the best anonymous voting option we have. They aren't actually tied to people's personal information and you know this. A blockchain will therefore be perfectly fine.
If no electronic option is good enough for you, remember the tyrants of today and yesterday have already mastered rigging the paper ballot and they likely already do have your voting history tabulated in some archive somewhere. If you think blockchains are a security nightmare, then the ID system to tie voters to paper ballots will give you PTSD.
There is no reason to believe that paper ballots aren't securable NOW and no reason to believe we will ever be able to secure electronic voting.
If you want to using cryptography print a challenge on the ballot have them type the number into 90s era flip phone sized device and have them write the response on the ballot. Without understanding anything about crypto they and the government both have half of a key and nobody can fool anyone.
Mathematically impossible to commit fraud based on math that has been given massive attention by a small army of very smart people.
If you can secure paper ballots, then blockchain voting by extension is much more secure.
Especially since blockchain encryption is not only extremely secure, but there is huge financial incentive to not break it, and that psychological barrier is ultimately the important one.
If you vote on your computer how exactly do you keep people's computer from voting for them? How do you keep them from for instance changing the UI so that the graphic for candidate A actually registers a vote for B?
How do you provide a way for user bob to verify he voted for A without also implicitly providing an easy way for him to verify his vote to someone pressuring him to share how he voted either to reward him for voting how that party pleases or to punish him for voting "incorrectly".
How do you provide a way to audit the vote without being able to see how people voted? If you do as you must have a database of ids to actual voters how do you keep that from leaking allowing everyone to see how everyone voted? Alternatively maybe it just leaks to whatever party is in control and THEY know how people voted so they can better target people for encouragement or suppression.
Not a single one of these issues is an issue with paper ballots but every one of these is a deal breaker for e-voting and some of them are mathematically unsolvable like it being impossible to have an auditable and secret electronic ballot.
Our current method of voting works and works well. We don't NEED an answer a few days quicker at the expense of totally destroying actual security and secrecy. This is a dumb idea and we are all dumber for having spent time thinking about it.
If you vote with paper, how do you stop unscrupulous people from assuming your identity and voting in your stead? What's to stop vote counters from disposing of your ballot because they claim you filled it out wrong, or didn't fill in the circle all the way, or used the wrong color pen, or any of the other tricks they do?
Anyone can defraud absolutely anything anyone else does, so it's pointless to use fear of fraud or abuse to not do a thing, especially voting where convenience and ease of use is a lot more important anyway.
Voting electronically is an inevitability given technological progress anyway, especially as we move out into space, so arguing about it isn't going to do any good.
FOSS has nothing to do with security. Decentralization works as long as there are more good than bad actors, otherwise you got a recipe for disaster.
Technology for that exists. We just need to use it.
There are voting methods hard to explain, this one is quite easy: "the winner must win against most of the other candidates on a 1x1 comparison"
And to avoid making n² voting rounds, we rank our preferences, the first beats all, the second beats all but the first...
Any ranked choice voting system is subject to Arrow's theorem; range/score/approval voting would be more effective.