Over at Begging to Differ they're talking about electronic voting irregularities, and ways to solve them. One solution being discussed in comments is a voting receipt. Obviously printing how you voted would be a problem -- you'd end up with folks offering $5 for every receipt for candidate X.

The BTD commenters know this, so they suggest having a random voter ID printed on the receipt. Then, later on, the voter can log into a website and check their vote. But this is still no good -- someone else can look at the screen over their shoulder, confirm their vote, and hand over a five-spot. Vote buying is still possible. It's just a little harder to do on a massive scale.

But I think there is a solution -- one that occurred to me during the e-voting presentation that I wrote about previously. I couldn't tell you the proper cryptographic name for it, but it has elements of hashing and public key cryptography, if you feel the need to apply terms to it.

Here's the gist: when you vote, you have the option of entering your email address and a private seed. In this case, let's say the seed is a number from 1 to 10. Simple enough, right? You also see some text explaining how this works: depending on how you vote, the number you enter will be transformed. If, say, you voted for the Republican candidate, your number will have one subtracted from it. If you voted for the Democrat, 1 is added to it. If the number goes outside the 1-10 range, it wraps around -- so a Democratic ballot with a seed value of 10 will spit out a result of 1; so will a Republican vote with a seed of 2. Without knowing the seed, you can't know how the vote was cast.

That algorithm could doubtless be adapted to accomodate multiple parties, and probably made even simpler. The important thing is that the output of whatever function you choose is ambiguous, and that the function is well-known -- tables of seed values and their outputs could be published; the voting machines could also explicitly state what the possible outputs for a chosen seed value were once a user entered it.

Then, when the votes are counted, the tabulating machine sends out emails to voters with the output value specific to the seed they entered. This has two advantages.

First, it enables people to know how their vote was counted, without opening up the possibility of vote buying. With the help of those published tables, a potential vote seller could always lie to the buyer about their seed value, allowing them to collect the money while still voting how they want. So long as the seed is secret, there's no problem.

The second advantage is that this would do a lot to prevent Diebold-style problems. Instead of having to safeguard the code for the voting machines and the machines themselves you just have to safeguard the counting code and the counting machines. The counting program could be ridiculously simple -- maybe ten lines of code, open to public review. Securing the tabulators would be much easier than securing the voting machines. And this way if someone screws with the voting machines a lot of people will know about it right away, since they'll be expecting an email with a specific result code -- if they don't get it, they'll presumably raise a fuss.

This might all sound complicated, but I honestly think that a decent marketing campaign could make it easy to understand.

does anyone have new year's even plans already? i believe i have a standing invitation to join some friends up in nyc, but i'd rather party down in the D to the C.

matt welch writes a reasoned and articulate argument on a subject i've long been honestly confused about: why the right seems to think the moonbat left is a) a legitimate part of the democratic party and b) is actually something to be feared:

Michael Moore did not even belong to the Democratic Party in 2000; his candidate was Ralph Nader, and Ralph Nader got a meager 2.7% of the vote. For the sake of argument, if you assume (wrongly) that every single one of those Nader voters, plus the 1.3% or so that defected from him in the last minute, represent "the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party," you are talking about 4% of the electorate, and maybe 8% of the Democratic Party. The real figure is likely much lower.

What about this year? In the primary season, Moore endorsed Wesley Clark, who campaigned like a boob, won one primary, and bowed out. Howard Dean, who is assumed (wrongly) to have Moore-like values (despite being a fiscal hawk who supported the four previous U.S.-led wars), didn't win a single primary. The Democratic candidate whose politics most closely mirrored Moore's was Dennis Kucinich, who was beaten like a rented elf. The nomination went to the former prosecutor & War Hero, and he picked as VP the second-most hawkish candidate from the primaries. And the Democratic Party Platform contained few if any of the provisions that the Moore/Nader/Kucinich 8% wing have been advocating for lo these many years.

Look, I used to work for these people, I have covered these people, I have certainly criticized these people, and from this extended exposure I can look you in the eye and say these people do not have a significant voice within the modern Democratic Party.

the michael moores of the world are as loony as everyone makes them out to be, and guess what? most of the democratic party looks at these people with the same disdain one would one feel towards, say, pop up ads on your computer. they're an annoyance; they're obnoxious and loud and can interfere with your otherwise purposeful and noble internet surfing experience; but WE NEVER CLICK THROUGH ON THEM TO ACTUALLY BUY THEIR SHIT AND IN FACT ALWAYS CLOSE THEM IMMEDIATELY OR INSTALL GOOGLE TOOLBAR.

now, that may have been a lousy analogy, but it's more or less truthful. how much actual electoral power within the democratic power does michael moore have? the unwashed hippie protestors of the world? the people making bush-hitler analogies? the noveau communists?

the answer is: absolutely zero. they have an agenda, but it is ignored. they put up their candidates (nader, kucinich), but they are soundly defeated within the democratic party and primaries. and i am absolutely convinced of the fact that moonbat lefties only get any attention at all because republicans seem so utterly terrified of them that they are constantly bringing their stupidity and pointless rhetoric into the limelight. and why shouldn't republicans do it? it serves them well. they can convince moderates that michael moore is actually running john kerry's campaign and once he's elected, moore will be the PUPPETMASTER and totally make abortions mandatory for everybody, publicly execute all returning marines, and install osama bin laden as chief justice of the supreme court.

meanwhile, over back on the ranch, welch elaborates on the fringe of the republican party...except they're not the fringe. they're powerful GOP politicians:

At the Republican Convention, one could find strolling the halls and signing autographs for worshipful Republican delegates the likes of Jerry Falwell. Who, you may recall, reacted to the Sept. 11 massacre by telling a nodding Pat Robertson that:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen."

Did Bush "miss a Souljah moment" by refusing to allow Falwell his seat at the RNC (which the Souljah-jonesers in the media demanded of Kerry and Moore)? Somehow, this didn't come up.

Anyway, the main point is not to compare competing fringes, but mostly to point out that the Republicans' extremist fringe includes powerful senior elected politicians from their own party. Moore, for all his sitting-next-to-people action at the DNC, was not invited on the podium. Rick Santorum, the senator from Pennsylvania who has described outlawing gay marriage as "the ultimate Homeland security," gave a rousing speech to the Republicans. Tom Coburn, the new Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for abortion doctors, and held up Fidel Castro's forced AIDS camps as a model worth emulating. Jim DeMint, your new Senator from South Carolina, thinks that single pregnant women shouldn't teach in public schools. If Bush wanted to deliver a "Sister Souljah moment," embracing cross-over moderation at the expense of his own party's fringe, he wouldn't need to take a swipe at a non-politician like Ann Coulter -- he could start in the august hall of the Unites States Senate.

so, anyone whining that the democratic party is controlled by the whacky left, you can shut your trap. i am a lifelong, card-carrying democrat of a gal, and i can tell you: these people never have had any power. they never will have any power. at most, they make up something like 5% of the democratic party. you can continued to be terrified that they will one day rule the earth, but if you're actually so afraid of fringe elements taking over our country, you'd be well advised to look inside the GOP and deal with and denounce them there.