Commital Deniable Proofs and Electronic Campaign Finance

In a recent Stanford Law Review article, Ayres and Bulow [1] propose a radical anonymity-based solution to disrupt the “market” for monetary influence in political campaigns. To realize their proposal, we propose new cryptographic protocols for commital deniable proofs and deniable payment schemes. “[T]here is little reason to doubt that sometimes large contributions will work actual corruption of our political system, and no reason to question the existence of a corresponding suspicion among voters.” – U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, Jan 24, 2000. “[Spiritually] lower than this is one who gives to the poor in a way that the giver does not know to whom he is giving and the poor person does not know who he took from. Lower than this is where the giver knows who he is giving to and the poor does not know who he is receiving from. Lower than this is where the poor knows who he is receiving from but the giver does not.” – Maimonides, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:7-14, 12th Century.