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If I understand your scheme, tampering is still possible, we can just detect that it happened. The major difference with a blockchain-based voting solution is t

If I understand your scheme, tampering is still possible, we can just detect that it happened. The major difference with a blockchain-based voting solution is that after-the-fact tampering is not possible; you can't arbitrarily remove votes from the chain. And if we try to modify your scheme so that we start cryptographically ensuring that votes are included in the final tally, it's going to start looking a lot like a blockchain. Let me reiterate: I am a blockchain skeptic. I think that, for the most part, it's a solution looking for a problem, and there's enough trust in most interactions that it's not worth the trouble. I just think voting is one of the rare instances where it does make sense.

MaxBarraclough 9y ago
> If I understand your scheme, tampering is still possible, we can just detect that it happened True, the voter can prove that tampering happened, as the signature receipt they are given is specific to their voting choice (as well as to their secret hash). How would a blockchain fare against a 51% attack? What secret/proof does the voter have that an imposter doesn't have? Is each person issued a 'votecoin'? How could we maintain voter anonymity?
- scott_s 9y ago
  To your questions, I don't know. I would think we would try to avoid 51% attacks by construction because the blockchain would not be easily accessible by non-voting machines. Voting currently doesn't do much to prevent imposters, so I wouldn't even try to addres that. It's also possible that voters would not even receive a transactions receipt (votecoin). They may not even be aware blockchain is going on behind the scenes: they may just see a normal voting machine at their precinct, beep-boop the screen and go home. The value would be in being able to audit the entire vote chain, which we currently don't do. Currently we spot-check the paper ballots against machine output for auditing. Re-doing the whole thing is a recount, and rare. My complaint about bitcoin itself is that rather than creating a virtual currency, we really created a virtual commodity; that is, it's the closest we've come to creating a virtual item that has the properties of scarcity and non-transferability of physical items. I think that's bad for a currency, but good for auditing votes.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    > I would think we would try to avoid 51% attacks by construction because the blockchain would not be easily accessible by non-voting machines. So we're trusting the voting machines? Doesn't that defeat the point? Surely they should be able to run on public networks while honouring Kerckhoffs's principle: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge. That's the whole mission here, no? > they may just see a normal voting machine at their precinct, beep-boop the screen and go home. The value would be in being able to audit the entire vote chain, which we currently don't do. But if there's no 'voter identity' in the system at all, what's stopping a malicious government from just synthesising the whole blockchain?
    - scott_s 9y ago
      > So we're trusting the voting machines? Maybe. I'm not married to much - I'm just defending that voting is one of the rare cases where I think blockchain has value. We currently trust the voting machines, so even if we do it with the voting machines, it's still an improvement on what we're currently doing. > But if there's no 'voter identity' in the system at all, what's stopping a malicious government from just synthesising the whole blockchain? Not much! So we either have to allow individuals voters to get a receipt and verify their votes (which can introduce problems), or we have to print paper receipts which are kept on site. Yes, those can be printed out as a bad actor synthesizes a new blockchain, but paper ballots can be faked, too. To me, the mission is creating an easily auditable voting record, which we do not have now.
      - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
        > We currently trust the voting machines Indeed, and that's a huge mistake. Should have stuck with paper ballot. The high-tech solution isn't always better. In this case, it seems pretty clear that it's far worse. The Diebold voting machines, for instance, have been shown to be a joke. I like Scheneier's idea that perhaps machines could have some value as supplemental machinery to a paper ballot https://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=voting&__mode=tag&IncludeBlogs=2&limit=10&page=1 https://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=vot... > I'm just defending that voting is one of the rare cases where I think blockchain has value > the mission is creating an easily auditable voting record I don't see any link between these two. I'm not convinced there'd be any value in a blockchain. > paper ballots can be faked, too But it's far harder to do so at scale than with voting machines, particularly if the voting machines are poorly implemented, which they invariably are.

MaxBarraclough 9y ago

> If I understand your scheme, tampering is still possible, we can just detect that it happened True, the voter can prove that tampering happened, as the signature receipt they are given is specific to their voting choice (as well as to their secret hash). How would a blockchain fare against a 51% attack? What secret/proof does the voter have that an imposter doesn't have? Is each person issued a 'votecoin'? How could we maintain voter anonymity?

scott_s 9y ago
To your questions, I don't know. I would think we would try to avoid 51% attacks by construction because the blockchain would not be easily accessible by non-voting machines. Voting currently doesn't do much to prevent imposters, so I wouldn't even try to addres that. It's also possible that voters would not even receive a transactions receipt (votecoin). They may not even be aware blockchain is going on behind the scenes: they may just see a normal voting machine at their precinct, beep-boop the screen and go home. The value would be in being able to audit the entire vote chain, which we currently don't do. Currently we spot-check the paper ballots against machine output for auditing. Re-doing the whole thing is a recount, and rare. My complaint about bitcoin itself is that rather than creating a virtual currency, we really created a virtual commodity; that is, it's the closest we've come to creating a virtual item that has the properties of scarcity and non-transferability of physical items. I think that's bad for a currency, but good for auditing votes.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  > I would think we would try to avoid 51% attacks by construction because the blockchain would not be easily accessible by non-voting machines. So we're trusting the voting machines? Doesn't that defeat the point? Surely they should be able to run on public networks while honouring Kerckhoffs's principle: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge. That's the whole mission here, no? > they may just see a normal voting machine at their precinct, beep-boop the screen and go home. The value would be in being able to audit the entire vote chain, which we currently don't do. But if there's no 'voter identity' in the system at all, what's stopping a malicious government from just synthesising the whole blockchain?
  - scott_s 9y ago
    > So we're trusting the voting machines? Maybe. I'm not married to much - I'm just defending that voting is one of the rare cases where I think blockchain has value. We currently trust the voting machines, so even if we do it with the voting machines, it's still an improvement on what we're currently doing. > But if there's no 'voter identity' in the system at all, what's stopping a malicious government from just synthesising the whole blockchain? Not much! So we either have to allow individuals voters to get a receipt and verify their votes (which can introduce problems), or we have to print paper receipts which are kept on site. Yes, those can be printed out as a bad actor synthesizes a new blockchain, but paper ballots can be faked, too. To me, the mission is creating an easily auditable voting record, which we do not have now.
    - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
      > We currently trust the voting machines Indeed, and that's a huge mistake. Should have stuck with paper ballot. The high-tech solution isn't always better. In this case, it seems pretty clear that it's far worse. The Diebold voting machines, for instance, have been shown to be a joke. I like Scheneier's idea that perhaps machines could have some value as supplemental machinery to a paper ballot https://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=voting&__mode=tag&IncludeBlogs=2&limit=10&page=1 https://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=vot... > I'm just defending that voting is one of the rare cases where I think blockchain has value > the mission is creating an easily auditable voting record I don't see any link between these two. I'm not convinced there'd be any value in a blockchain. > paper ballots can be faked, too But it's far harder to do so at scale than with voting machines, particularly if the voting machines are poorly implemented, which they invariably are.