8 ms·

You could do it this way: Two or more block chains. Each run by different parties. And a need for the same vote to show up on multiple blockchains to count. Th

by devoply 10y ago

You could do it this way: Two or more block chains. Each run by different parties. And a need for the same vote to show up on multiple blockchains to count. The voters would visit multiple websites to cast their votes which would then be verified between the various block chains, potentially by software that anyone can run on their own computer or vps. Every single person does not have to vote on multiple platform. Just enough that you can validate the voting.

endisukaj 10y ago
Or you can just use a piece of paper, pencil and a plastic box to collect the votes.
- devoply 10y ago
  Yes and how do you, as a citizen, verify that it's not been tampered with. In the US in the past few elections at least there has been accusations of fraud. And also having this sort of thing makes it possible to do research on the data afterwards... for anyone to do research on the data as it's public. No so with any other system.
  - slasaus 10y ago
    If you take the time to enter the voting booth when it opens and verify that the ballot boxes are empty at the start, and stay in the voting booth until it closes, you can verify yourself if everyone put at most one ballot in the ballot box. Later on you can double check if indeed every ballot is counted correctly and can thus conclude that at least your own ballot is counted correctly and exactly once without having to let anyone know what you voted.
    - exit 10y ago
      nice. election day isn't even a holiday in america.
      - toyg 10y ago
        I would hope there is some way for political parties to observe all voting and counting procedures. That's how it's done in most countries.
        huac 10y ago
        There are procedures for this, everybody calls the observers of their opposing party 'thugs' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party_voter_intimidation_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party_voter_... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/05/election-day-violence-donald-trump-poll-watchers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/05/election-day...
        Karunamon 10y ago
        Usually because there's a fine line between "poll watching" and "poll intimidation" and people generally aren't quite civilized, thoughtful, or well-mannered enough to stay on the good side. That includes "shouting racial slurs" in your first link.
        tdb7893 10y ago
        That's more worries about them harassing voters or legitimate election officials than not liking oversight.
      - chimeracoder 10y ago
        > nice. election day isn't even a holiday in america. First of all, there are fifty elections in the US (not counting territories like Puerto Rico and Guam). Each state runs its own elections separately and can decide on their procedures. Secondly, some jurisidctions already experimented with making election days a holiday. Aside from the fact that this only affects government employees (private businesses set their work schedules at their discretion, just as they do for other holidays), this ended up decreasing turnout, because people ended up taking the previous day off, treating it as an extra-long weekend for travel or vacation. Third, this is a moot point when most states (34/50) offer early voting, and three more vote by mail, making "election day" rather arbitrary. It's really the last date on which someone can cast their vote. Those states also include three of the four largest states, meaning that the vast majority of people in the US have the option to vote well ahead of election day. (For the record, the states which have neither early voting nor no-excuse absentee voting are Alabama, Connecticut, Mississippi, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York)
    - slasaus 10y ago
      > If you take the time to enter the voting booth when it opens and verify that the ballot boxes are empty at the start, and stay in the voting booth until it closes Too late to edit my own post but please s/voting booth/polling station/ in the parent. Of course every voter should have absolute privacy in the voting booth in order to rule out coercion, but the ballot storage in the polling station should be publicly verifiable.
  - pikzen 10y ago
    * Each voter signs off his name on the registered voter list before dropping it into the ballot box. If you want to do multiple votes, it's going to be harder. Anyone can come and watch those. * Unboxing the ballot is done in public, anyone can come and watch those. * Counting the votes is public and anyone can come and watch. Voting on paper is dead simple, has withstood centuries of attacks, counting scales insanely well while attacks don't scale and it just takes one person to notice it and your whole plan goes south. Whereas electronic voting requires trusting black boxes, more black boxes, and understanding asymmetric cryptography.
  - specialist 10y ago
    Sign up as a poll observer, inspector, or judge. Attend your jurisdictions public hearings. Attend the canvassing board meetings. Show up and keep showing up. Take notes. Fact check. Over time, you'll know when the story doesn't add up. Been there, done that. For years. It works.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    First of all, limit the risks. Do runoff elections and split electoral votes in all states (or just don't have per-state elections it makes almost no difference). The risks now is that a 1% error can sway 100% of the votes in 5 states. It's just an unbelievably broken constitution. If that's "too hard to fix" then there must be at least a fraction of people who don't think this is broken. The time to fix it is right after elections.
  - tathougies 10y ago
    In all US states you can sign up to inspect the election, including collection and counting. There are not many requirements other than registration, in California at least. IIUC, in many states, the ballots themselves become publicly inspect able after a certain period of time
  - tathougies 10y ago
    In all US states you can sign up to inspect the election, including collection and counting. There are not many requirements other than registration, in California at least. IIUC, in many states, the ballots themselves become publicly inspect able after a certain period of time
slasaus 10y ago
How anonymous is your vote in the blockchain(s)? And how can you still verify the vote is counted correctly and exactly once while lacking hard proof to others about what you voted?
- devoply 10y ago
  Perhaps all voting should be public. All voting 100% public. 0% funding from any source other than individual citizens. And even that should be heavily capped. So each individual citizen over 18 can give say $100 dollars and that's it.
  - slasaus 10y ago
    Knowing what one voted opens the door for coercion. Think of family members wanting you to vote a certain way. If you vote anonymously you can never prove to them what you voted, which protects the voter from any social, religious or other external pressure one might feel.
    - devoply 10y ago
      Well apparently it has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot So I guess ballots should be anonymous. So how to do that with a blockchain. Well simply by assigning some random number or hash to the voters that no one else knows.
      - burkaman 10y ago
        That doesn't help. If there is any way to prove your vote, then you can easily sell your vote.
        logfromblammo 10y ago
        Selling votes is not a problem. Secretly selling votes is the problem. Perhaps it would be better to turn the vote-selling market into a publicly verifiable open market? If I say that it would cost a buyer $10k more for me to vote yes than the highest open bid for me to vote no, that is a strong quantifiable indication of the magnitude of my opposition. I'm sure the vote-pricing data would be a gold mine for statisticians. Of course, this would make the plutocratic oligarchy operate out in the open, officially, rather than behind the scenes with lobbying, campaign contributions, and speaking fees. Some people might find that objectionable: both those who do not want a plutocracy and those who do not want their money influence on politics to be openly known.
cesnja 10y ago
No, in your proposed case, a single blockchain would be better than many. If one party controls the whole blockchain, it's "easy" to forge data in it [1]. On the other hand, distrust between involved parties makes it hard to forge and deny actions on a single blockchain (though it'd still be possible with a 2-party system). Btw, I wonder how and why people want to implement blockchain for use in government or banks - since they are big monoliths, 51% attack is a real possibility. [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp
amalcon 10y ago
Why involve a blockchain when there's no coordination problem? The only benefit of a blockchain over a log is that multiple, uncoordinated parties can agree on an order of events, but order doesn't matter here.

by devoply 10y ago

endisukaj 10y ago

Or you can just use a piece of paper, pencil and a plastic box to collect the votes.

devoply 10y ago
Yes and how do you, as a citizen, verify that it's not been tampered with. In the US in the past few elections at least there has been accusations of fraud. And also having this sort of thing makes it possible to do research on the data afterwards... for anyone to do research on the data as it's public. No so with any other system.
- slasaus 10y ago
  If you take the time to enter the voting booth when it opens and verify that the ballot boxes are empty at the start, and stay in the voting booth until it closes, you can verify yourself if everyone put at most one ballot in the ballot box. Later on you can double check if indeed every ballot is counted correctly and can thus conclude that at least your own ballot is counted correctly and exactly once without having to let anyone know what you voted.
  - exit 10y ago
    nice. election day isn't even a holiday in america.
    - toyg 10y ago
      I would hope there is some way for political parties to observe all voting and counting procedures. That's how it's done in most countries.
      - huac 10y ago
        There are procedures for this, everybody calls the observers of their opposing party 'thugs' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party_voter_intimidation_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party_voter_... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/05/election-day-violence-donald-trump-poll-watchers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/05/election-day...
        Karunamon 10y ago
        Usually because there's a fine line between "poll watching" and "poll intimidation" and people generally aren't quite civilized, thoughtful, or well-mannered enough to stay on the good side. That includes "shouting racial slurs" in your first link.
        tdb7893 10y ago
        That's more worries about them harassing voters or legitimate election officials than not liking oversight.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > nice. election day isn't even a holiday in america. First of all, there are fifty elections in the US (not counting territories like Puerto Rico and Guam). Each state runs its own elections separately and can decide on their procedures. Secondly, some jurisidctions already experimented with making election days a holiday. Aside from the fact that this only affects government employees (private businesses set their work schedules at their discretion, just as they do for other holidays), this ended up decreasing turnout, because people ended up taking the previous day off, treating it as an extra-long weekend for travel or vacation. Third, this is a moot point when most states (34/50) offer early voting, and three more vote by mail, making "election day" rather arbitrary. It's really the last date on which someone can cast their vote. Those states also include three of the four largest states, meaning that the vast majority of people in the US have the option to vote well ahead of election day. (For the record, the states which have neither early voting nor no-excuse absentee voting are Alabama, Connecticut, Mississippi, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York)
  - slasaus 10y ago
    > If you take the time to enter the voting booth when it opens and verify that the ballot boxes are empty at the start, and stay in the voting booth until it closes Too late to edit my own post but please s/voting booth/polling station/ in the parent. Of course every voter should have absolute privacy in the voting booth in order to rule out coercion, but the ballot storage in the polling station should be publicly verifiable.
- pikzen 10y ago
  * Each voter signs off his name on the registered voter list before dropping it into the ballot box. If you want to do multiple votes, it's going to be harder. Anyone can come and watch those. * Unboxing the ballot is done in public, anyone can come and watch those. * Counting the votes is public and anyone can come and watch. Voting on paper is dead simple, has withstood centuries of attacks, counting scales insanely well while attacks don't scale and it just takes one person to notice it and your whole plan goes south. Whereas electronic voting requires trusting black boxes, more black boxes, and understanding asymmetric cryptography.
- specialist 10y ago
  Sign up as a poll observer, inspector, or judge. Attend your jurisdictions public hearings. Attend the canvassing board meetings. Show up and keep showing up. Take notes. Fact check. Over time, you'll know when the story doesn't add up. Been there, done that. For years. It works.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  First of all, limit the risks. Do runoff elections and split electoral votes in all states (or just don't have per-state elections it makes almost no difference). The risks now is that a 1% error can sway 100% of the votes in 5 states. It's just an unbelievably broken constitution. If that's "too hard to fix" then there must be at least a fraction of people who don't think this is broken. The time to fix it is right after elections.
- tathougies 10y ago
  In all US states you can sign up to inspect the election, including collection and counting. There are not many requirements other than registration, in California at least. IIUC, in many states, the ballots themselves become publicly inspect able after a certain period of time
- tathougies 10y ago
  In all US states you can sign up to inspect the election, including collection and counting. There are not many requirements other than registration, in California at least. IIUC, in many states, the ballots themselves become publicly inspect able after a certain period of time

slasaus 10y ago

How anonymous is your vote in the blockchain(s)? And how can you still verify the vote is counted correctly and exactly once while lacking hard proof to others about what you voted?

devoply 10y ago
Perhaps all voting should be public. All voting 100% public. 0% funding from any source other than individual citizens. And even that should be heavily capped. So each individual citizen over 18 can give say $100 dollars and that's it.
- slasaus 10y ago
  Knowing what one voted opens the door for coercion. Think of family members wanting you to vote a certain way. If you vote anonymously you can never prove to them what you voted, which protects the voter from any social, religious or other external pressure one might feel.
  - devoply 10y ago
    Well apparently it has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot So I guess ballots should be anonymous. So how to do that with a blockchain. Well simply by assigning some random number or hash to the voters that no one else knows.
    - burkaman 10y ago
      That doesn't help. If there is any way to prove your vote, then you can easily sell your vote.
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        Selling votes is not a problem. Secretly selling votes is the problem. Perhaps it would be better to turn the vote-selling market into a publicly verifiable open market? If I say that it would cost a buyer $10k more for me to vote yes than the highest open bid for me to vote no, that is a strong quantifiable indication of the magnitude of my opposition. I'm sure the vote-pricing data would be a gold mine for statisticians. Of course, this would make the plutocratic oligarchy operate out in the open, officially, rather than behind the scenes with lobbying, campaign contributions, and speaking fees. Some people might find that objectionable: both those who do not want a plutocracy and those who do not want their money influence on politics to be openly known.

cesnja 10y ago

No, in your proposed case, a single blockchain would be better than many. If one party controls the whole blockchain, it's "easy" to forge data in it [1]. On the other hand, distrust between involved parties makes it hard to forge and deny actions on a single blockchain (though it'd still be possible with a 2-party system). Btw, I wonder how and why people want to implement blockchain for use in government or banks - since they are big monoliths, 51% attack is a real possibility. [1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp

amalcon 10y ago

Why involve a blockchain when there's no coordination problem? The only benefit of a blockchain over a log is that multiple, uncoordinated parties can agree on an order of events, but order doesn't matter here.