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One option would be to open up more infrastructure initiatives to direct democracy. Arguably the most heavily invested body to getting the subways improved is t

One option would be to open up more infrastructure initiatives to direct democracy. Arguably the most heavily invested body to getting the subways improved is the people who actually live in New York and use them. Making this feasible would require a more efficient platform for soliciting ideas from citizens, voting on them and tracking overall execution which doesn't exist today. This isn't, however, an intractable problem - there are distributed trust systems (based on so-called "trust algorithms") that are being designed today such as Ethereum.

ceejayoz 9y ago
Is there anything folks won't just add "with a blockchain!" to and claim to have solved a problem?
- porpoisemonkey 9y ago
  I'm not sure I understand the reference since I don't comment on or look at much blockchain related articles here on HN. (Most of my research has been tangential to my former employment as a web security developer.) Is there a technical reason that a blockchain isn't suitable as one part of a possible solution to improving the speed, reliability and security of voting in the United States? My understanding of the blockchain concept is that what it provides is a proof-of-effort consensus-based system for creating an open and auditable ledger for transactions which would seem to fit the requirement of having an open and verifiable voting ledger for ballot initiatives.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > Is there a technical reason that a blockchain isn't suitable as one part of a possible solution to improving the speed, reliability and security of voting in the United States? Ignoring for a moment things like hard forks, 51% attacks, lost keys, theft of votes via malware, etc., the biggest non-technical objection I'd see to it is that the concept of a secret ballot is considered absolutely critical in the US.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - andrewfong 9y ago
    > Is there a technical reason that a blockchain isn't suitable as one part of a possible solution to improving the speed, reliability and security of voting in the United States? The better question is: what do you gain from using a blockchain? Distributed ledgers aren't magically faster, more reliable, and secure than a centralized ledger. They just don't require trusting any single party. But you're proposing using a distributed ledger to record voting on policies executed by centralized political entities. At the end of the day, you still have to trust the MTA or some state or local government to do what your voters tell them to. And your voting eligibility is tied to citizenship and/or proof of residency, as established by your inclusion in some centralized database anyway. So assuming electronic direct democracy is the solution here (and that's a big assumption), you're probably better off just having the MTA set up a webform tied to a database and calling it a day.
ameister14 9y ago
It'd be much easier just to make voting day a national holiday. A big problem with things now is voter education, and people go to the polls without actually understanding what they are voting for - they are rushed and push through, or don't vote at all.
- averagewall 9y ago
  Surely it's more that they don't want to understand what they're voting for. Their main concern is to keep the other party out of power no matter what. Any thoughts about whether the party they're voting for is actually doing what they want are secondary and end up getting ignored if they conflict with the primary goal of not letting the "baddies" win.
  - zanny 9y ago
    You can't blame individual citizens for structural (sometimes intentional) flaws of first past the post voting. All discussions on politics really boil back down to this - representation sucks because first past the post sucks. Changing the voting system in most places is a constitutional amendment. Hence, it will never happen. Nothing can get better because the only people who can change it (and don't say third parties, remember, we are in a system structurally designed to kill opposition to the ruling duopoly) are the ones in power because of the system the way it is. If people could vote for the person they want to rule, with (preferably) proportional instant runoff elections (and thus no fear of "the lesser of two evils"), almost none of the current politicians in any state would be in power.
    - BigJono 9y ago
      That's evidentially false though. We have a much better system in Australia and all the exact same problems. Most of it boils down to what the previous posters said. People are completely and wilfully uneducated. More than half the country (I'd say closer to 80-90%) are literally just voting for red team vs blue team with zero basic understanding of how the voting system even works. The majority of people in Australia don't even know that we don't have FPTP voting, despite being asked to fill out preferences on the voting form. They also have no knowledge of how the senate voting works or even the senate's purpose in the government. The major parties and media conspire to keep this attitude prevalent. The situation seems unsolvable. There's no incentive for the average person to dedicate any more time to politics than it takes to read a headline each day when they have their own lives to worry about. And such a shallow level of understanding is totally abusable by anyone and everyone with a pen in their hand. The system is broken, but the voting system is just the tip of the iceberg.

ceejayoz 9y ago

Is there anything folks won't just add "with a blockchain!" to and claim to have solved a problem?

porpoisemonkey 9y ago
I'm not sure I understand the reference since I don't comment on or look at much blockchain related articles here on HN. (Most of my research has been tangential to my former employment as a web security developer.) Is there a technical reason that a blockchain isn't suitable as one part of a possible solution to improving the speed, reliability and security of voting in the United States? My understanding of the blockchain concept is that what it provides is a proof-of-effort consensus-based system for creating an open and auditable ledger for transactions which would seem to fit the requirement of having an open and verifiable voting ledger for ballot initiatives.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > Is there a technical reason that a blockchain isn't suitable as one part of a possible solution to improving the speed, reliability and security of voting in the United States? Ignoring for a moment things like hard forks, 51% attacks, lost keys, theft of votes via malware, etc., the biggest non-technical objection I'd see to it is that the concept of a secret ballot is considered absolutely critical in the US.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- andrewfong 9y ago
  > Is there a technical reason that a blockchain isn't suitable as one part of a possible solution to improving the speed, reliability and security of voting in the United States? The better question is: what do you gain from using a blockchain? Distributed ledgers aren't magically faster, more reliable, and secure than a centralized ledger. They just don't require trusting any single party. But you're proposing using a distributed ledger to record voting on policies executed by centralized political entities. At the end of the day, you still have to trust the MTA or some state or local government to do what your voters tell them to. And your voting eligibility is tied to citizenship and/or proof of residency, as established by your inclusion in some centralized database anyway. So assuming electronic direct democracy is the solution here (and that's a big assumption), you're probably better off just having the MTA set up a webform tied to a database and calling it a day.

ameister14 9y ago

It'd be much easier just to make voting day a national holiday. A big problem with things now is voter education, and people go to the polls without actually understanding what they are voting for - they are rushed and push through, or don't vote at all.

averagewall 9y ago
Surely it's more that they don't want to understand what they're voting for. Their main concern is to keep the other party out of power no matter what. Any thoughts about whether the party they're voting for is actually doing what they want are secondary and end up getting ignored if they conflict with the primary goal of not letting the "baddies" win.
- zanny 9y ago
  You can't blame individual citizens for structural (sometimes intentional) flaws of first past the post voting. All discussions on politics really boil back down to this - representation sucks because first past the post sucks. Changing the voting system in most places is a constitutional amendment. Hence, it will never happen. Nothing can get better because the only people who can change it (and don't say third parties, remember, we are in a system structurally designed to kill opposition to the ruling duopoly) are the ones in power because of the system the way it is. If people could vote for the person they want to rule, with (preferably) proportional instant runoff elections (and thus no fear of "the lesser of two evils"), almost none of the current politicians in any state would be in power.
  - BigJono 9y ago
    That's evidentially false though. We have a much better system in Australia and all the exact same problems. Most of it boils down to what the previous posters said. People are completely and wilfully uneducated. More than half the country (I'd say closer to 80-90%) are literally just voting for red team vs blue team with zero basic understanding of how the voting system even works. The majority of people in Australia don't even know that we don't have FPTP voting, despite being asked to fill out preferences on the voting form. They also have no knowledge of how the senate voting works or even the senate's purpose in the government. The major parties and media conspire to keep this attitude prevalent. The situation seems unsolvable. There's no incentive for the average person to dedicate any more time to politics than it takes to read a headline each day when they have their own lives to worry about. And such a shallow level of understanding is totally abusable by anyone and everyone with a pen in their hand. The system is broken, but the voting system is just the tip of the iceberg.