Voting Integrity Constraints

Purpose

This document defines non-negotiable constraints for systems that support collective decision-making under the Humanity Framework.

Voting is treated as a safety-critical function. Failure of voting integrity constitutes civilizational harm.

Core Principle

Participation must be:

• equal
• private
• verifiable
• resistant to coercion
• resistant to tampering
• resilient to failure

Trust is insufficient. Correctness must be provable.

Fundamental Guarantees

1. One Human, One Vote

Each eligible human may:

• cast at most one vote per decision
• verify that their vote was counted
• verify that no additional votes were substituted

No system may amplify, suppress, or duplicate participation.

2. Identity Separation

Voting systems must strictly separate:

• eligibility verification
• ballot casting
• vote counting

No component may link:

• voter identity to ballot content
• eligibility credentials to final tally

Linkability after validation is forbidden.

Privacy and Anonymity

3. Ballot Secrecy

No authority may:

• determine how an individual voted
• infer voting behavior through metadata
• reconstruct ballots after casting

Privacy must persist:

• during voting
• after voting
• indefinitely

4. Resistance to Coercion

Systems must prevent:

• proof-of-vote generation
• vote selling
• forced disclosure

If a voter can prove how they voted, the system is unsafe.

Verifiability

5. End-to-End Verifiability

Voting systems must allow:

• voters to verify inclusion of their ballot
• observers to verify correctness of the tally
• auditors to verify process integrity

Verification must not compromise voter anonymity.

6. Public Auditability

Vote counting must be:

• transparent
• reproducible in principle
• independently auditable

Black-box tallying is forbidden.

Integrity and Tamper Resistance

7. Tamper Evidence

All voting artifacts must be:

• immutable once cast
• tamper-evident
• traceable through public logs

Undetectable modification constitutes failure.

8. Determinism and Reproducibility

Vote counting must be:

• deterministic
• reproducible from published artifacts
• independent of hidden state

If two honest auditors cannot reproduce results, the system is invalid.

Infrastructure Constraints

9. Minimal Trusted Computing Base

Voting systems must:

• minimize complexity
• minimize code surface
• minimize dependencies

Complexity increases attack surface. Simplicity increases trust.

10. Network Isolation During Voting

Voting infrastructure must not:

• depend on live network access
• allow remote code execution
• allow dynamic updates during voting

Connectivity increases risk.

Failure Handling

11. Fail-Safe Behavior

On failure, systems must:

• halt voting
• preserve cast ballots
• prevent partial or corrupted tallies
• make failure visible immediately

Silent degradation is forbidden.

Accountability

12. Responsibility for Integrity

Responsibility for voting integrity lies with:

• system designers
• system deployers
• system operators

Voters are never responsible for:

• system compromise
• hidden failure modes
• misleading assurances

Enforcement

Any system that violates these constraints:

• must not be used for governance
• must not be trusted for collective decision-making
• must be withdrawn until corrected

Efficiency does not excuse risk. Convenience does not excuse harm.

Relationship to Other Documents

• Secure Communication Constraints define confidentiality requirements.
• Safety and Responsibility define harm minimization.
• Transparency Guarantees define observability.
• Governance Models define scope and enforcement.

Summary

Democracy cannot rely on trust alone.

A voting system that cannot be verified cannot be legitimate.

Participation without integrity is coercion by other means.