Lesson plan
ThreeBallot
ThreeBallot is a voting protocol invented by Ron Rivest and Warren D. Smith in 2006. ThreeBallot is an end-to-end (E2E) auditable voting system that can in principle be implemented on paper. The goal in its design was to provide some of the benefits of a cryptographic voting system without using cryptographic keys. It may be difficult for a vote to be both verifiable and anonymous. ThreeBallot attempts to solve this problem by giving each voter three ballots: one verifiable, and two anonymous. The voter chooses which ballot is verifiable and keeps this secret; since the vote-counter does not know, there is a 1/3 chance of being discovered destroying or altering any single ballot. The voter is forced to make two of their three ballots cancel each other out, so that they can only vote once.
Article summary
ThreeBallot is a voting protocol invented by Ron Rivest and Warren D. Smith in 2006. ThreeBallot is an end-to-end (E2E) auditable voting system that can in principle be implemented on paper. The goal in its design was to provide some of the benefits of a cryptographic voting system without using cryptographic keys. It may be difficult for a vote to be both verifiable and anonymous. ThreeBallot attempts to solve this problem by giving each voter three ballots: one verifiable, and two anonymous. The voter chooses which ballot is verifiable and keeps this secret; since the vote-counter does not know, there is a 1/3 chance of being discovered destroying or altering any single ballot. The voter is forced to make two of their three ballots cancel each other out, so that they can only vote once.
Key claims
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.