Abstract on Proposed New Voting Protocol

On Bruce Scneier's weblog [schneier.com], there was a link to a paper describing a proposed new voting protocol [mit.edu] written by Ron Rivest [wikipedia.org] (who, by the way, is the "R" in RSA [wikipedia.org]).

It is actually really interesting to read (well, for nerds like me). It has checks to prevent several methods of voting fraud, allows a voter to check that their vote was registered properly, allows for recounts (unlike the horrible electronic voting machines deployed currently), and gives the voter a receipt which they can use to file a protest (if their vote wasn't registered) and cause a recount.

Now, I know what you're thinking - if the voter gets a receipt, then it may allow people to be coerced into voting for a particular candidate. But the receipt doesn't give you any way to verify how you voted, only that you voted.

The only real problem that I see is that the process may be too complicated for some voters. I mean, we're talking about people who were confused by the butterfly ballots [cnn.com]. Ugh.