Dispute Resolution in Voting

In voting, disputes arise when a voter claims that the voting authority is dishonest and did not correctly process his ballot while the authority claims to have followed the protocol. A dispute can be resolved if any third party can unambiguously determine who is right. We systematically characterize all relevant disputes for a generic, practically relevant, class of voting protocols. Based on our characterization, we propose a new definition of dispute resolution for voting that accounts for the possibility that both voters and the voting authority can make false claims and that voters may abstain from voting. A central aspect of our work is timeliness: a voter should possess the evidence required to resolve disputes no later than the election's end. We characterize what assumptions are necessary and sufficient for timeliness in terms of a communication topology for our voting protocol class. We formalize the dispute resolution properties and communication topologies symbolically. This provides the basis for verification of dispute resolution for a broad class of protocols. To demonstrate the utility of our model, we analyze a mixnet-based voting protocol and prove that it satisfies dispute resolution as well as verifiability and receipt-freeness. To prove our claims, we combine machine-checked proofs with traditional pen-and-paper proofs

Judicial Protection of Popular Sovereignty: Redressing Voting Technology

My analysis seeks to underscore the gravity of technologically threatened constitutional voting rights and values, implicating both individual rights to vote and the structural promise of popular sovereignty. Resolution of the dispute over the meaning of Fourteenth Amendment17 principles properly derived from Bush v. Gore18 will be pivotal to assuring meaningful voting rights in the information society. If the Court should hold the Fourteenth Amendment to embrace a deferential standard of review or arduous intent requirements, allowing state political branches to persist in choosing voting technologies based on scientifically unfounded premises that do not achieve classic components of voting rights, the American Republic’s future is seriously endangered.19 The argument proceeds in two parts. Part I traces illustrative empirical findings of the two comprehensive, definitive voting systems studies, offers evidence derived from actual election calamities that substantiates the experts’ findings, and translates these findings into concepts meaningful for voting rights and election law. Part II considers the judiciary’s failures thus far to understand the legal import of the scientific studies of voting systems when adjudicating the structural legal sufficiency of deployed voting systems20 and identifies questions on which scholarship is critically needed. Throughout, owing to space constraints, the argument is illustrative rather than comprehensive

Judicial Protection of Popular Sovereignty: Redressing Voting Technology

My analysis seeks to underscore the gravity of technologically threatened constitutional voting rights and values, implicating both individual rights to vote and the structural promise of popular sovereignty. Resolution of the dispute over the meaning of Fourteenth Amendment17 principles properly derived from Bush v. Gore18 will be pivotal to assuring meaningful voting rights in the information society. If the Court should hold the Fourteenth Amendment to embrace a deferential standard of review or arduous intent requirements, allowing state political branches to persist in choosing voting technologies based on scientifically unfounded premises that do not achieve classic components of voting rights, the American Republic’s future is seriously endangered.19 The argument proceeds in two parts. Part I traces illustrative empirical findings of the two comprehensive, definitive voting systems studies, offers evidence derived from actual election calamities that substantiates the experts’ findings, and translates these findings into concepts meaningful for voting rights and election law. Part II considers the judiciary’s failures thus far to understand the legal import of the scientific studies of voting systems when adjudicating the structural legal sufficiency of deployed voting systems20 and identifies questions on which scholarship is critically needed. Throughout, owing to space constraints, the argument is illustrative rather than comprehensive

When, What, and Why do States Choose to Delegate?

Koremenos demonstrates that international delegation is an important and nontrivial empirical phenomenon. Using an extensive data set created from the United Nations Treaty Series, she finds that almost half of all international agreements involve delegation of some kind. By exploring the institutional design choices of international delegation, she finds that dispute resolution is the most commonly delegated function and often involves externally delegating authority to an existing arbitration tribunal or an international court. Furthermore, she finds that external delegation in particular increases with the existence of complex cooperation problems such as enforcement and uncertainty and with the heterogeneity and number of parties

A framework for comparing the security of voting schemes

We present a new framework to evaluate the security of voting schemes. We utilize the framework to compare a wide range of voting schemes, including practical schemes in realworld use and academic schemes with interesting theoretical properties. In the end we present our results in a neat comparison table. We strive to be unambiguous: we specify our threat model, assumptions and scope, we give definitions to the terms that we use, we explain every conclusion that we draw, and we make an effort to describe complex ideas in as simple terms as possible. We attempt to consolidate all important security properties from literature into a coherent framework. These properties are intended to curtail vote-buying and coercion, promote verifiability and dispute resolution, and prevent denial-of-service attacks. Our framework may be considered novel in that trust assumptions are an output of the framework, not an input. This means that our framework answers questions such as ”how many authorities have to collude in order to violate ballot secrecy in the Finnish paper voting scheme?

World Trade Organization (WTO): Issues in the Debate on Continued U.S. Participation

[Excerpt] Following World War II, the United States led efforts to establish an open and nondiscriminatory trading system with the expressed goal of raising the economic well-being of all countries and bolstering world peace. These efforts culminated in the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1948, a provisional agreement on tariffs and trade rules that governed world trade for 47 years. The World Trade Organization (WTO) succeeded the GATT in 1995 and today serves as a permanent body that administers the rules and agreements negotiated and signed by 153 participating parties, as well as a forum for dispute settlement and negotiations. Section 125 of the Uruguay Round Agreements (P.L. 103-465), which is the law that approved and implemented the agreements reached during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, provided that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) must submit to Congress every five years a report that analyzes the costs and benefits of continued U.S. participation in the WTO. The USTR submitted its report to Congress on March 1, 2010, triggering a 90 legislative day timetable in which any Member of Congress may introduce a privileged joint resolution withdrawing congressional approval of the WTO Agreement (to date no withdrawal resolution has been introduced in the 111th Congress). Most observers maintain that U.S. withdrawal from the WTO is at best highly unlikely for both substantive and procedural reasons. Substantively, the withdrawal of U.S. participation could undermine a multilateral system of trade rules and practices, formulated and implemented under U.S. leadership, that on balance has contributed to increased economic prosperity and security at home and abroad. Procedurally, a withdrawal resolution would have to pass both the House and Senate and then surmount a likely Presidential veto via an override with a two-thirds majority vote. Nevertheless, such a resolution provides an opportunity for Members of Congress periodically to debate “whether the WTO is an effective organization” and ways it could better serve U.S. interests. The purpose of this report is to analyze some of the main issues in any debate on U.S. participation in the WTO and to address some of the criticisms leveled at the organization. Academic studies indicate that the United States benefits from broad reductions in trade barriers worldwide, but some workers and industries might not share in those gains. Decisions in the WTO are made by member governments, which determine their negotiating positions, file dispute challenges, and implement their decisions. However, some argue that smaller countries are left out of decision-making and that governments tend to represent the interests of large corporations disproportionately. The United States has been a frequent participant in WTO dispute proceedings, both as a complainant and as a respondent. There have been complaints that countries do not adhere to decisions and that U.S. trade remedy laws have not been judged properly. It is also argued that this multilateral dispute settlement process is unique and that the United States has successfully used the process to advance its economic interests. Certain advocates for the environment, food safety, labor, development, and financial regulation have criticized the WTO. Much of the criticism is based on interpretations of various WTO agreements or rulings that have been controversial. An appendix sets out the legislative procedures for the WTO withdrawal resolution. This report will be updated as events warrant