So there are a few things that bring us humans together in the way that an election does. We stand in elections; we vote in elections; we observe elections. Our democracies rely on elections. We all understand why we have elections, and we all leave the house on the same day to go and vote. We cherish the opportunity to have our say, to help decide the future of the country. The fundamental idea is that politicians are given mandate to speak for us, to make decisions on our behalf that affect us all. Without that mandate, they would be corrupt.
Postoji nekoliko stvari koje spajaju ljude na način na koji to čine izbori. Podržavamo kandidate, glasamo na izborima, posmatramo izbore. Naša demokratija zavisi od izbora. Svi razumemo zašto imamo izbore i svi na isti dan napuštamo domove i idemo da glasamo. Cenimo mogućnost da kažemo, da odlučimo budućnost naše države. Osnovna ideja je da je političarima dat mandat da govore umesto nas, da umesto nas donose odluke koje utiču na sve nas. Bez tog mandata, bili bi korumpirani.
Well unfortunately, power corrupts, and so people will do lots of things to get power and to stay in power, including doing bad things to elections. You see, even if the idea of the election is perfect, running a countrywide election is a big project, and big projects are messy. Whenever there is an election, it seems like something always goes wrong, someone tries to cheat, or something goes accidentally awry -- a ballot box goes missing here, chads are left hanging over here.
Pa, nažalost, moć dovodi do toga, pa će ljudi uraditi mnogo toga da dođu do moći i da je zadrže, uključujući i štetne stvari za izbore. Vidite, čak i da je ideja izbora savršena, voditi nacionalne izbore je veliki projekat, a veliki projekti su neuredni. Kad god su izbori, čini se kao da uvek nešto ide kako ne treba, neko pokušava da vara, ili nešto slučajno krene naopako - ovde nestanu glasačke kutije, tamo glasački listići.
To make sure as few things as possible go wrong, we have all these procedures around the election. So for example, you come to the polling station, and a poll station worker asks for your ID before giving you a ballot form and asking you to go into a voting booth to fill out your vote. When you come back out, you get to drop your vote into the ballot box where it mixes with all the other votes, so that no one knows how you voted.
Kako bi osigurali da što manje stvari krene po zlu, imamo sve te procedure u vezi sa izborima. Na primer, dođete do biračkog mesta, i radnik na biračkom mestu vas pita za ličnu kartu pre nego što vam da glasački list i pita vas da odete u glasačku kabinu da date svoj glas. Kada izađete, morate ubaciti listić u glasačku kutiju gde se meša sa svim ostalim glasovima, kako niko ne bi znao kako ste glasali.
Well, what I want us to think about for a moment is what happens after that, after you drop your vote into the ballot box. And most people would go home and feel sure that their vote has been counted, because they trust that the election system works. They trust that election workers and election observers do their jobs and do their jobs correctly. The ballot boxes go to counting places. They're unsealed and the votes are poured out and laboriously counted. Most of us have to trust that that happens correctly for our own vote, and we all have to trust that that happens correctly for all the votes in the election. So we have to trust a lot of people. We have to trust a lot of procedures. And sometimes we even have to trust computers. So imagine hundreds of millions of voters casting hundreds of millions of votes, all to be counted correctly and all the things that can possibly go wrong causing all these bad headlines, and you cannot help but feel exhausted at the idea of trying to make elections better.
Pa, ono o čemu bih voleo da nakratko razmislite jeste šta se dešava posle, nakon što ubacite listić u glasačku kutiju. Većina ljudi bi otišla kući i bila sigurna da je i njihov listić prebrojan, jer veruju da je sistem izbora uspešan. Veruju u to da birački odbor i posmatrači izbora obavljaju svoj posao i da to čine ispravno. Glasačke kutije odlaze na mesto za prebrojavanje. Tamo se otpečate, glasovi se prospu i onda se vredno prebrojavaju. Većina nas mora da veruje da se to radi na ispravan način za naš glas, a svi moramo da verujemo da se to radi ispravno za sve glasove na izborima. Znači moramo verovati mnogim ljudima. Moramo verovati mnogim procedurama. I ponekad moramo verovati čak i kompjuterima. Zamislite stotine miliona glasača kako daju stotine miliona glasova, da se ispravno izbroje i sve stvari koje eventulano mogu poći naopako izazivaju sve te loše vesti. I nemoguće je ne osećati se iscrpljeno povodom ideje da pokušate izbore napraviti boljim.
Well in the face of all these bad headlines, researchers have taken a step back and thought about how we can do elections differently. They've zoomed out and looked at the big picture. And the big picture is this: elections should be verifiable. Voters should be able to check that their votes are counted correctly, without breaking election secrecy, which is so very important. And that's the tough part. How do we make an election system completely verifiable while keeping the votes absolutely secret?
U inat svim ovim lošim vestima, istraživači su se vratili korak u nazad i mislili o tome kako izbori mogu drugačije da se održe. Udaljili su se i uzeli u obzir čitavu sliku. A ta slika je ovo: izbori treba da budu proverljivi. Glasači bi trebalo da imaju mogućnost da provere da li su njihovi glasovi tačno izbrojani, bez da se naruši tajnost izbora, što je mnogo važno. I to je težak deo. Kako da napravimo sistem izbora koji se može proveriti, a da glasovi i dalje budu potpuno tajni?
Well, the way we've come up with uses computers but doesn't depend on them. And the secret is the ballot form. And if you look closely at these ballot forms, you'll notice that the candidate list is in a different order on each one. And that means, if you mark your choices on one of them and then remove the candidate list, I won't be able to tell from the bit remaining what your vote is for. And on each ballot form there is this encrypted value in the form of this 2D barcode on the right. And there's some complicated cryptography going on in there, but what's not complicated is voting with one of these forms. So we can let computers do all the complicated cryptography for us, and then we'll use the paper for verification.
Sistem kojeg smo se mi dosetili koristi kompjutere, ali ne zavisi od njih. A tajna je u glasačkom listiću. Ako pažljivo pogledate ove listiće, primetićete da je redosled kandidata drugačiji na svakom listiću. U suštini, ako obeležite svoj glas na jednom od njih i onda uklonite listu, neću biti u stanju da na osnovu preostalog kažem za koga ste glasali. Na svakom listiću postoji ova šifrovana vrednost u obliku ovog 2D barkoda sa desne strane. I tu se dešava neka komplikovana kriptografija, ali ono što nije složeno jeste glasanje sa jednim takvim listićem. Dakle, možemo pustiti kompjutere da urade tu složenu kriptografiju za nas, a mi da uzmemo papir za potvrdu.
So this is how you vote. You get one of these ballot forms at random, and then you go into the voting booth, and you mark your choices, and you tear along a perforation. And you shred the candidate list. And the bit that remains, the one with your marks -- this is your encrypted vote. So you let a poll station worker scan your encrypted vote. And because it's encrypted, it can be submitted, stored and counted centrally and displayed on a website for anyone to see, including you. So you take this encrypted vote home as your receipt. And after the close of the election, you can check that your vote was counted by comparing your receipt to the vote on the website. And remember, the vote is encrypted from the moment you leave the voting booth, so if an election official wants to find out how you voted, they will not be able to. If the government wants to find out how you voted, they won't be able to. No hacker can break in and find out how you voted. No hacker can break in and change your vote, because then it won't match your receipt. Votes can't go missing because then you won't find yours when you look for it.
Ovako izgleda glasanje. Nasumičnim izborom dobijete jedan od ovih listića, odete u glasačku kabinu, obeležite svoje izbore, i pocepate duž perforacije. I uništite listu kandidata. I ono što ostane, ono sa vašim glasovima, to je vaš šifrovani glas. Nakon toga date radniku na izborima da skenira vaš šifrovan glas. I zbog toga što je šifrovan, može da se upiše, sačuva i računa, i da se prikaže na sajtu da svako može da vidi, pa i vi. Tako da i nosite taj šifrovan glas kući kao vašu priznanicu. I nakon zatvaranja glasačkih mesta, možete proveriti da li su brojali vaše glasove poredeći vašu potvrdu sa glasovima na sajtu. I zapamtite, glas je šifrovan od trenutka kada napustite glasačko mesto, tako da i u slučaju da zvaničnici izbora žele da saznaju kako ste glasali, neće to moći. Ako vlada želi da sazna kako ste glasali, neće to moći. Ni jedan haker ne može da provali i sazna kako ste glasali. Ni jedan haker ne može da provali i promeni vaš glas, jer se onda neće slagati sa vašom priznanicom. Glasovi ne mogu da nestanu, jer onda nećete naći svoj glas kada ga budete tražili.
But the election magic doesn't stop there. Instead, we want to make the whole process so transparent that news media and international observers and anyone who wants to can download all the election data and do the count themselves. They can check that all the votes were counted correctly. They can check that the announced result of the election is the correct one. And these are elections by the people, for the people. So the next step for our democracies are transparent and verifiable elections.
Ali magija izbora se ovde ne završava. Mi želimo da čitav proces napravimo tako transparentnim da novinari i međunarodni posmatrači ili svako ko to želi, može da preuzme podatke sa izbora i sam prebroji glasove. Mogu proveriti da li su svi glasovi ispravno prebrojani. Mogu proveriti da li je objavljeni rezultat izbora ispravan. Ovo su izbori od naroda, za narod, tako da je sledeći korak u našoj demokratiji transparentni i proverljivi izbori.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(aplauz)