secret ballot (stretch goal)

[dckc]

I don't (yet?) see a way through these constraints:

• each member should get at most one vote; no double-voting
• a member wants to vote without disclosing their choice to other members
• a member wants to vote without disclosing their choice to the coop secretary
• the coop secretary should not disclose membership email addresses to other members
• losing a private key should not result in loss of membership voting rights

I have read some articles that do seem to meet many of these constraints, but they seem to involve elaborate use of elliptic curve cryptography; in particular, they start with the voters having key pairs, not just email addresses.

[dckc]

@TheoXD has been investigating https://github.com/fentec-project/CiFEr

wish: decryption in rholang

[dckc]

Helios Voting provides secret ballots. It's a turn-key solution.

It also uses postgres, so presumably the same mirroring approach could apply... though I'm not sure that would preserve confidentiality.

https://github.com/benadida/helios-server/blob/master/INSTALL.md

[dckc]

@leithaus said the coop (secretary) does not need to know which member voted for what.

[dckc]

idea: a low-tech social approach...

The governance committee could be empowered (by the board) to collect votes confidentially.

A member could choose to meet confidentially with at least 3 members of the governance committee who would authenticate the member and communicate their vote to the secretary without sharing it with the rest of the membership (let alone the world).

The governance committee as a whole would share some audit trail with the board and membership, such as "we collected votes from 7 members confidentially."

[TheoXD]

@dckc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreeBallot
Maybe this can give some ideas.