Next, we need to actually count the ballots in a way that can be verified. The key idea is that the ballots are shuffled in a way that we can be sure that no individual vote has been changed, but we don’t know which input vote corresponds to which output vote....
This confuses me. Is it difficult to shuffle the paper ballots without changing votes? Are we concerned that the ink my be moved from one circle to another circle or something?
A more sensical analogy in paper ballots might be replacing a ballot. E.g. a counter scoops up some ballots into one sleeve and dumps some from the other while shuffling them around.
In a chad-based system though, the vote might actually change as the ballot was being physically handled.
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This confuses me. Is it difficult to shuffle the paper ballots without changing votes? Are we concerned that the ink my be moved from one circle to another circle or something?
The encrypted ballots are all public and it isn't assumed they they're anonymous (eg. it's safe to post a picture of your RHS ballot on Facebook).
If we just directly decrypted them and published the results, they would allow someone to prove who they had voted for.
So instead, we shuffle them to anonymise them, then decrypt them to avoid being able to link an encrypted input vote to an output vote.
A more sensical analogy in paper ballots might be replacing a ballot. E.g. a counter scoops up some ballots into one sleeve and dumps some from the other while shuffling them around.
In a chad-based system though, the vote might actually change as the ballot was being physically handled.