Secret ballot laws didn’t end voter intimidation, and the current electoral system leaves most people unsatisfied. An alternative, Autonomous Confederal Ballots, can sow organic change with simplicity, speed, quality and low cost.

  • In Autonomous Confederal Ballots (ACB), voters consensually form DAO-like Voter Groups with one-voter minimums (though better to have 2+). Each group’s voters must reside within the same jurisdiction and only vote within their group.
  • All votes are public within the group, but not outside. Voters choose their Voter Groups to stay among confidants: where they can Openly Vote and Count Together, privately from others. A group could also choose not to use this decentralized confidentiality and opt for anonymity or non-anonymity.
  • The group combines the votes into Anonymized Grouped Results and then shares with all other groups alongside their Electoral Rolls. They undergo Auditing to prevent double-voting and, if used with another system (like our current), then incorporated into that total. If the audit finds that people in any fully-anonymous group voted multiple times, those groups could face penalties. These range from a proportional decrease in their votes up to all affected votes declared spoiled. With Anonymized Grouped Results or non-anonymous ballots, affected Voter Groups can remove fraudulent votes without jeopardizing the rest, thus self-regulating.


WHAT AUTONOMOUS CONFEDERAL BALLOTS SOLVES

Insecurity

Electoral fraud is low-risk and high-reward. By creating an inherent auditing system, we block all current fraud paths, such as ballot stuffing and ballot tampering.

Decentralizing responsibility for electoral rolls and voter verification adds multiple benefits. It assists upkeep, halts voter fraud—low-reward, high-risk—condemns voter suppression and encourages self-regulation of voter eligibility.

Restrictive Ballots

While ACB can easily plug transitionally into today’s electoral systems, it allows for decentralized self-governance, where the group itself chooses who or what shows on their ballot in the first place. Ballot recording would also be subject to each Voter Group’s needs and wants, such as devices for disabilities, braille or print choice. We could even have viva voce again.

With some adjustment, multiple voting systems can function inside ACB. For example, Instant Runoff Voting would play out within groups and then Range Voting proportionally converted before incorporation into the larger vote count.

Due to the public nature of the vote within group, paper remains optional and each group keeps its respective, authoritative originals. Open source software and reputable encryption protocols (like Signal) then securely transmits Electoral Rolls and Anonymized Group Results between groups for verification and compilation.

Reticent Voter Turnout & Top-Down Government

It positively affects voter confidence by reducing corruption, easing ballot access, removing voter deterrents and allowing alternative voting systems, the lattermost of which would also reduce party/bureaucrat dominance, mud-slinging, endless red tape and us-versus-them mentalities. When Voter Groups can independently design their ballots, ACB also fights the disqualification of “incomplete” ballots for people who choose to not vote between certain options.

While it can function within the current system, ACB can also become the basis for panarchy or anarchic confederalism, where issues can be handled as close to home as possible.

COMPLEMENTS TO AUTONOMOUS CONFEDERAL BALLOTS

Another system that can work alongside ACB: Ballot Images to Online Open Count (BIOOC). Paper ballots have a unique serial number recorded only by the voter casting it. Once ballots scanned onto the internet, voters use the serial numbers to verify that their ballot’s count. Transparency enables voters and watchdog groups to audit ballots. If a voter wants to reveal that their miscounted ballot, they can voluntarily de-anonymize.

It doesn’t solve for ballot stuffing, like ACB, but Open Ballots does! Ballots are just scanned online, then everyone can confirm the count and that only real, eligible people voted. It simplifies the process far more than any other, if with no option for confidentiality, like ACB.


The validation of Autonomous Confederal Ballots and BIOOC in the marketplace of ideas will likely convince the undecided, resulting in mass adoption, higher voter confidence and more secure elections that can be incorporated in today’s system, or in minarchic, panarchic or anarchic settings. Is that worth giving up what we currently have?

The opinions shared here do not necessarily represent the official position of the Libertarian Party. These editorial articles have been submitted by Libertarians across the country, and featuring these topics does not represent an endorsement of the content therein.