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Moscow may use Ethereum based voting blockchain system in upcoming election

19 points by bjflanne 9y ago

fncypants 9y ago
Using an existing program called Active Citizen, the city of Moscow has been allowing residents to cast votes for measures ranging from the name of their new metro train to the color of the seats in a new sports arena. Why is this even on the front page? This is not Russia... moving towards a transparent, functioning democratic system.
- avmich 9y ago
  Yeah, the whole article reads as if from another planet :) . Disregarding known problems of electronic voting, which aren't mentioned here - what Russia he's talking about? What fair elections could be on federal level or in Moscow these days?..
apo 9y ago
I'm generally pessimistic about the desirability and utility of block chain voting systems. Spend any amount of time around Bitcoin beginners and the one of the recurring themes will be lost private keys. And "lost" includes countless thefts through network-based attacks aided and abetted by people conditioned for years to take computer security lightly. If voting identities are controlled by private keys, then voters will lose their voting rights left and right. Worse, just because an election is "on a block chain" doesn't mean that voter fraud isn't being committed. For example, buying and selling cryptographic voter identities could become a very lucrative industry.
- jameslevy 9y ago
  The simple answer is to combine blockchain with legacy methods of verifying that votes aren't sold or double voting occurs. So that probably still means going to a physical polling location for the forseeable future. The use of blockchain tech wouldn't initially replace that, it would just provide a 100% accurate paper and open trail of the vote.
- vlovich123 9y ago
  In addition to all that, pretty sure Ethereum isn't anonymous. Since the public keys are presumably registered with the government can not only tell who you voted for, stuffing the ballot box becomes trivially easy by just registering a bunch of fake public keys for which you control the private keys. Maybe some of these problems could be solved by generating the key at the ballot box & just throwing away the private key, but then I fail to see what addition a blockchain provides as you still need to verify the public keys are valid first.
  - prepend 9y ago
    The keys aren’t known to an individual. They are used as a way for citizens to confirm that their vote was counted. An example- go to the poll. Cast a vote and get a print out with a private key. Go home and check the blockchain to make sure your vote is recorded. If your vote is missing, report somewhere official with your sheet of paper. There’s lots of variations, but anonymity is only given up if your vote is missing. Then you just vote again. Smart contracts make sure your original lost vote can’t be applied. The US needs something like this because currently our digital voting leave no record and there’s no way for an individual to confirm their vote was counted accurately.
    - dontyouremember 9y ago
      That’s intentional in the US, otherwise people would sell votes or get coerced to vote.
    - syrgian 9y ago
      It also means that you can prove to others that you voted the "right" thing. With all its implications.
    - tom_mellior 9y ago
      > Cast a vote and get a print out with a private key. Go home and check the blockchain to make sure your vote is recorded. Apart from the problem that this enables vote buying or coercion, it also: (a) is a good use for a public database, but putting that public database on the blockchain is just a useless complication of things; and (b) only addresses part of the problem: yes, any voter's vote is counted; but is everything that's counted an actual person's unique vote? That is, this doesn't protect against ballot stuffing by multiple voting or by simply faking database entries. Overall, not a terribly good approach, and even if it were, no need to "blockchain" it.
- gt_ 9y ago
  This looks like a premature assessment. The problem with voting systems are many, and so are the benefits and ways to apply blockchain tech. There are other examples in different comments already, but the most glaring prematurity here sounds like some sort of comparison being made to crypto currency. I honestly don’t understand why you’re doing that or the point you’re making. For one other example so far unmentioned, mere distribution of public keys (not reliance on them) along with open source decentralized blockchain is grounds for verification far beyond what we have now, which lingers near the zero mark. Why would we complain about that?
joejerryronnie 9y ago
Is voting even a thing in Russia? I thought it was "place your x next to Putin or one of his friends if you don't want to find yourself in a Siberian Gulag".
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  Yes, voting is a thing in Russia. No, you won't find yourself in Siberian Gulag (what is it?). Just because most of Russia citizens chose Putin doesn't mean that there's something wrong with voting. He's considered by most people as best president of Russia since Stalin, so it shouldn't be a surprise that Russian people like him (and, of course, enemy governments trying to paint him black, because he's not bowing before them anymore). IT crowd, of course, won't agree. Well, too bad, because minority does not dictate to majority in democracy. Before US elections it was hard to find anyone who would be pro-Trump, everyone was liberal. It gave the impression that Clinton should have 99% of votes. Well, it didn't work that way, it turned out that there are a lot of citizens who voted for Trump, even if they didn't post a lot on hacker news. It's the same with Putin. Older people vote for him. Government and state workers vote for him. Businessmen vote and support him. Of course few loud liberals will shout everywhere about unfair elections, but it doesn't mean that they are really unfair. Putin's support is enormous in Russia, like it or not. You may call it brainwash or whatever, it won't help. There's no other leader who worth a vote. Sorry, I hate political posts, but such naiveté makes me cry. No, there are no Gulags in Russia, if you really think this way, your brain was washed by western propaganda even more than average Russian's brain.
  - mantas 9y ago
    Isn't Gulag system one of the best works of Stalin? It should be kinda hard to admire the guy and not cheer at gulags..
  - olegious 9y ago
    You're being downvoted because most people that don't know Russia's post USSR history blindly follow the propaganda without questioning why many blue collar Russians would actually be pro-Putin.
hitekker 9y ago
This is not a vote of confidence for Ethereum.
sparky_ 9y ago
> I can almost hear the screams of terror from the Democratic party in the U.S. as I type those words. They know they’ll never win a national or state-wide election again without ballot stuffing, voter bussing and illegal immigrants voting multiple times. It's hard to take such a blog seriously when they cannot refrain from even the most captious of emotional remarks.
- vr46 9y ago
  Came here to post exactly this. What the hell? Post suddenly makes a right turn into Lunatic Alley.
  - uniformlyrandom 9y ago
    Suddenly?

19 points by bjflanne 9y ago

Using an existing program called Active Citizen, the city of Moscow has been allowing residents to cast votes for measures ranging from the name of their new metro train to the color of the seats in a new sports arena. Why is this even on the front page? This is not Russia... moving towards a transparent, functioning democratic system.

avmich 9y ago
Yeah, the whole article reads as if from another planet :) . Disregarding known problems of electronic voting, which aren't mentioned here - what Russia he's talking about? What fair elections could be on federal level or in Moscow these days?..

apo 9y ago

I'm generally pessimistic about the desirability and utility of block chain voting systems. Spend any amount of time around Bitcoin beginners and the one of the recurring themes will be lost private keys. And "lost" includes countless thefts through network-based attacks aided and abetted by people conditioned for years to take computer security lightly. If voting identities are controlled by private keys, then voters will lose their voting rights left and right. Worse, just because an election is "on a block chain" doesn't mean that voter fraud isn't being committed. For example, buying and selling cryptographic voter identities could become a very lucrative industry.

jameslevy 9y ago
The simple answer is to combine blockchain with legacy methods of verifying that votes aren't sold or double voting occurs. So that probably still means going to a physical polling location for the forseeable future. The use of blockchain tech wouldn't initially replace that, it would just provide a 100% accurate paper and open trail of the vote.
vlovich123 9y ago
In addition to all that, pretty sure Ethereum isn't anonymous. Since the public keys are presumably registered with the government can not only tell who you voted for, stuffing the ballot box becomes trivially easy by just registering a bunch of fake public keys for which you control the private keys. Maybe some of these problems could be solved by generating the key at the ballot box & just throwing away the private key, but then I fail to see what addition a blockchain provides as you still need to verify the public keys are valid first.
- prepend 9y ago
  The keys aren’t known to an individual. They are used as a way for citizens to confirm that their vote was counted. An example- go to the poll. Cast a vote and get a print out with a private key. Go home and check the blockchain to make sure your vote is recorded. If your vote is missing, report somewhere official with your sheet of paper. There’s lots of variations, but anonymity is only given up if your vote is missing. Then you just vote again. Smart contracts make sure your original lost vote can’t be applied. The US needs something like this because currently our digital voting leave no record and there’s no way for an individual to confirm their vote was counted accurately.
  - dontyouremember 9y ago
    That’s intentional in the US, otherwise people would sell votes or get coerced to vote.
  - syrgian 9y ago
    It also means that you can prove to others that you voted the "right" thing. With all its implications.
  - tom_mellior 9y ago
    > Cast a vote and get a print out with a private key. Go home and check the blockchain to make sure your vote is recorded. Apart from the problem that this enables vote buying or coercion, it also: (a) is a good use for a public database, but putting that public database on the blockchain is just a useless complication of things; and (b) only addresses part of the problem: yes, any voter's vote is counted; but is everything that's counted an actual person's unique vote? That is, this doesn't protect against ballot stuffing by multiple voting or by simply faking database entries. Overall, not a terribly good approach, and even if it were, no need to "blockchain" it.
gt_ 9y ago
This looks like a premature assessment. The problem with voting systems are many, and so are the benefits and ways to apply blockchain tech. There are other examples in different comments already, but the most glaring prematurity here sounds like some sort of comparison being made to crypto currency. I honestly don’t understand why you’re doing that or the point you’re making. For one other example so far unmentioned, mere distribution of public keys (not reliance on them) along with open source decentralized blockchain is grounds for verification far beyond what we have now, which lingers near the zero mark. Why would we complain about that?

joejerryronnie 9y ago

Is voting even a thing in Russia? I thought it was "place your x next to Putin or one of his friends if you don't want to find yourself in a Siberian Gulag".

vbezhenar 9y ago
Yes, voting is a thing in Russia. No, you won't find yourself in Siberian Gulag (what is it?). Just because most of Russia citizens chose Putin doesn't mean that there's something wrong with voting. He's considered by most people as best president of Russia since Stalin, so it shouldn't be a surprise that Russian people like him (and, of course, enemy governments trying to paint him black, because he's not bowing before them anymore). IT crowd, of course, won't agree. Well, too bad, because minority does not dictate to majority in democracy. Before US elections it was hard to find anyone who would be pro-Trump, everyone was liberal. It gave the impression that Clinton should have 99% of votes. Well, it didn't work that way, it turned out that there are a lot of citizens who voted for Trump, even if they didn't post a lot on hacker news. It's the same with Putin. Older people vote for him. Government and state workers vote for him. Businessmen vote and support him. Of course few loud liberals will shout everywhere about unfair elections, but it doesn't mean that they are really unfair. Putin's support is enormous in Russia, like it or not. You may call it brainwash or whatever, it won't help. There's no other leader who worth a vote. Sorry, I hate political posts, but such naiveté makes me cry. No, there are no Gulags in Russia, if you really think this way, your brain was washed by western propaganda even more than average Russian's brain.
- mantas 9y ago
  Isn't Gulag system one of the best works of Stalin? It should be kinda hard to admire the guy and not cheer at gulags..
- olegious 9y ago
  You're being downvoted because most people that don't know Russia's post USSR history blindly follow the propaganda without questioning why many blue collar Russians would actually be pro-Putin.

hitekker 9y ago

This is not a vote of confidence for Ethereum.

sparky_ 9y ago

> I can almost hear the screams of terror from the Democratic party in the U.S. as I type those words. They know they’ll never win a national or state-wide election again without ballot stuffing, voter bussing and illegal immigrants voting multiple times. It's hard to take such a blog seriously when they cannot refrain from even the most captious of emotional remarks.

vr46 9y ago
Came here to post exactly this. What the hell? Post suddenly makes a right turn into Lunatic Alley.
- uniformlyrandom 9y ago
  Suddenly?