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Comment by tossandthrow | Hacker News Reader

You don't think this is even more pronounced if the criminals can keep af gun to your head in your own home when voting?

That said - I am yet to see any protocol that is resilient against not showing up IRL (due to the exact reason above).

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Criminals showing up to your house, putting a gun to your head, and demanding your vote is a fantasy. You don’t need to defend against it because it’s a totally unscalable way to steal an election.

In most cases coercion probably won't be as obvious as someone literally pointing a gun to your head (though there certainly could be a literal or metaphorical gun to the head in some cases). Typically it'll probably be something more subtle like: "Hi, I'm going door to door to turn out the vote. Have you voted yet? No? Here, let me help you fill out your ballot. I'll even turn it in for you."

Coercion doesn't need to be overt to be effective, just a small amount of social pressure applied over a large number of people is enough to make a significant difference. That's why typically there are laws banning campaigning right outside polling places. Now what if the "polling place" is the entire country, over a period of multiple weeks? How are you going to enforce that? And how can the electorate trust that it is being effectively enforced?

Here in Argentina each party has a big ballot. We can cut it and mix part of different parties, like a president from party A, a governor from party B and a major from party C. But most people are lazy and just select everyone from the same party.

A few years ago, some of the local county majors know that people liked them more than the candidate to governor or president of the same party. So they send helpers to each house to ask people and give them cut ballots with the combination they liked. No judgement. People can choose whoever they want. The county majors know it was better for them in average.

So it's possible to scale it if you distribute the task.

We have in person secret voting. So people can lie and accept the ballots provided by the helpers of the local major and then just pick another when voting. If people can vote remotely, they can be forced to vote under supervision.

Apparently it is not fantasy that these people do it at the locations.

I think more creative thinking on how the schemes could look will show some scalable solutions to coerce votes.

If you are interested in creative voter coercion, and generally very creative ways of changing law so that the election results always end up how you like them, I recommend reading up on the very innovative Hungarian system https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/how-viktor-orban...

> “Chain voting” ensures that people vote the right way. Voter 1 goes into the polling station,

> appears to vote by depositing an empty envelope into the ballot box, but comes out with a

> blank ballot. Voter 2 is then sent in with that ballot—now marked by a [party] operative—and

> told to put it in the ballot box and exit with another blank ballot in hand. Carried on down

> the line, the [...] party boss in the town can ensure that all have voted the proper way

> while the election workers find that they are short only one unaccounted-for vote

You’re talking about voter intimidation at polling places, right? Yes, that is in fact well documented and not a fantasy.

You can send a couple guys with bats to a polling location and coerce hundreds of voters. What you’re describing would require a highly organized set of crimes taking years of man hours that would definitely attract law enforcement due to the prolonged time and scale. Fantasy.

“Creative thinking” is leading you down the path of made up problems with ludicrous solutions.

happened in annexed parts of Ukraine during "referendum"

Source on that? That was a crooked vote, but it doesn’t really make sense for the Russians to send people door-to-door threatening people to send in coerced absentee ballots.

I assume they instead did the more normal things of local voter intimidation, outright not counting, and lying. If your government doesn’t want to follow democracy you’re fucked either way. No need for armed gunman to make you vote at gunpoint.

just door to door "vote at home" canvassing with two guys armed with AK. I wonder how many people assumed nobody would check where the tick went on the ballot. There were videos.

and yeah, I've been an election observer a couple of times, witnessing democracy deterioration in Russia proper, I have to say that they cheat on _every_ level, with ridiculous redundancy, and in many cases without any noticeable coordination. All it takes is to make elections in municipal organizations like schools and hospitals and just by convenience assign bureaucrats and other government paid officials (like teachers!) to manage voting districts. Those guys are very well trained to understand unofficial demand for "results". Otherwise you know, next time funding would be lower or day to day work would become harder.

I get what you’re saying, but that’s not really relevant.

That was political theatre being made in a conquered territory, not an actual attempt at democracy. It’s like pondering the specifics of a vehicle’s engine performance/efficiency after it’s been hit by a fucking train.

There was/is no solution to fix voting problems in Russian held territory other than to violently force Russian thugs to leave.

I suspect you have bigger fish to fry than better voting systems if your problems are this bad.

The digital platform would allow you to recast the vote after. Only the final vote counts. So unless you are kidnapped and guarded after rhe fact, it wouldn't work.

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