The Ballot-Box

Mafia in the ballot box

We study the impact of organized crime on electoral competition. In a theoretical model where parties compete for mafia support, we show that (i) the strongest party is willing to pay the highest price to secure mafia services; (ii) the volume of electoral trade with the mafia increases with political competition and with the efficiency of the mafia organization. Guided by these theoretical pre...

Bigger than a Ballot Box

The Security Power of the Ballot Box

We show that any function f can be securely evaluated by a protocol with ballots and a ballot box. That is, n mutually suspicious players, each player i possessing a secret input xi, can use ballots and ballot boxes to jointly evaluate f(x1, . . . , xn) = (y1, . . . , yn), so that (no matter how many players may collude and deviate from their prescribed instructions, and no matter how long they...

A Digital Electronic Ballot Counter Box

Little or no technological advancement, geometric increase in population, and manual counting process has made a democratic system practiced by developing countries of the world inefficient, slow and unattractive. To move away from this system, technology must be adopted to automate democratic process of voting. This paper describes the design and implementation of a digital electronic ballot c...

The Bull & the Ballot Box: Art Museum Economic Strategies