6 ms·

This feels a bit backwards to me - is the goal to describe and implement a "secure election", or to apply blockchain to X?

by maldeh 8y ago

dragontamer 8y ago
Indeed. Furthermore, "secure elections" are a solved problem. Have paper ballots, and scan them later. If you have any reason to suspect the scanners, then throw away the scanners and then proceed by hand. There are statistical methods to count a small number by hand (+ corroborate with poll results) to ensure a degree of consistency. Chi-squared distributions and stuff (I'm not a mathematician, but I'm sure there's some statistical method to verify the results without counting everything by hand). The main problem with blockchain is that it requires everyone to trust the blockchain. With humans counting by hand, you don't require any trust. As long as the ballots are properly stored, you can always recount the results.
- nixpulvis 8y ago
  Calling "secure elections" a solved problem made me laugh.
  - swerveonem 8y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. I laughed too. Shill obviously works for a problem.
    - nixpulvis 8y ago
      I remember back in college listening to a guest lecturer talk about the problems with electronic voting. It was very interesting. I think the entire political world is still feeling the wrath of the 21st century. Hopefully we all make it out alive.
- CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
  Paper ballots are fine for infrequent elections. But not for things a bit more ... liquid[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy
- aeternus 8y ago
  You still require trust with the paper ballots, there are multiple threat models: - System needs to ensure everyone votes only once - Ensure each person meets the qualifications to vote - Ensure ballots cannot be counterfeit or additional ballots inserted somehow - Ensure votes are confidential throughout the process - Ensure voters cannot prove their votes to others - Ensure the people counting are trusted or the results checked / verified - Ensure all ballots are actually counted One significant negative with the paper ballot method is that voters cannot confirm the last point. I have no way of confirming that my ballot was actually counted and contributed to the final tally's.
  - foepys 8y ago
    To attack paper ballots you need people. Like thousands of people working with you to manipulate important elections directly at the source. With electronic voting, you potentially need a single person with a computer on the other side of the globe exploiting a security flaw, that will inevitably be there. Whoever claims to write bug free software is a conman. I also don't want to be able to verify my vote. If I can, that means that somebody else also can. Given how tech-illiterate the average human is, voting crypto keys will be littered all around the internet.
    - aeternus 8y ago
      >I also don't want to be able to verify my vote. If I can, that means that somebody else also can. Given how tech-illiterate the average human is, voting crypto keys will be littered all around the internet. Right, I should have been more clear. You typically do want voters to be able to prove that they voted and that their vote was counted, but you do not want voters to be able to prove the contents of their vote (who they voted for).
  - DennisP 8y ago
    Some kinda famous cryptographers have designed verifiable paper voting systems: https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiAnswers.html https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiAnswers.html https://rangevoting.org/SleatorCheapo.html https://rangevoting.org/SleatorCheapo.html
- gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
  For tallying results, trust has to be placed in the people and/or machines tallying the results. With a blockchain-based system, every voter would count everyone else's votes
  - icebraining 8y ago
    How would you know every vote was registered in the blockchain?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
      Because its a public, verifiable data structure. That's not to say it's perfect, it's subject to 51% attacks so yes votes could possibly be discarded in that case.
- swerveonem 8y ago
  This removes the cryptography aspects, which is what keeps the system and results verifiable after the fact. Of course the votes can be counted and statistical estimations of accuracy can be used to attempt to detect fraud but that can also be performed AFTER each individual vote is recorded on a blockchain. In fact the only reason not to utilize blockchain technology in election processes is to ensure the results can be manipulated.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    What blockchain voting scheme(s) provide at least as much anonymity as paper ballots?
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Can you clarify this a bit? What unique security assurances are offered by a blockchain that cannot be provided by other cryptographic methods?
kenhwang 8y ago
I think "secure election" is one of the few uniquely viable use cases for blockchain. In my opinion, elections should be easily anonymized, verifiable, distributed, and resistant to bad actors. That seems like a slam dunk for the things blockchain claims to be good at. What's unique about blockchain compared to paper ballots is, everyone has access to every ballot if every ballot was recorded on the blockchain, which is unfeasible with physical paper ballots. The slow speed of consensus is also less of an issue for elections than it is for financial transactions. That being said, use of blockchain alone doens't make a election secure.
- vkou 8y ago
  The integrity of a paper ballot election is verifiable by anyone with a grade six level of education. A digital blockchain election is verifiable by a small percentage of the population, which consists of techno-wizards. Paper ballots win, hands-down, in that respect. Blockchains are better then opaque electronic voting machines, but not entirely better then paper.
  - foepys 8y ago
    People may downvote you but I have never seen an explanation that tackles exactly this point. For paper ballots you can easily take anybody that completed elementary school to get a correct result. For blockchain, electronic voting, etc, you need highly skilled people. How can you be sure that this single person per voting district isn't screwing everybody over?
    - kosievdmerwe 8y ago
      There's also the fact that you can't verify that the verification done applies to each machine in the field. If your crypto system has non-verifiability of who you voted for as a requirement. How do you prove that the code actually running on the machine didn't change the vote? Especially seeing as actual machines have code other than the election software running on it, think touch screen controllers, etc..
- monocasa 8y ago
SkyMarshal 8y ago
Yeah it's backwards. We need to first characterize how to implement a secure election, compile a criteria for that, then evaluate tech platforms against that. Given that experts already know how to secure elections and that traditional tech solves the problem just fine, Blockchain would almost certainly lose. Election tech experts like Verified Voting, Black Box Voting, and Ed Felton & co at Princeton already know how to secure elections, but for whatever reason that knowledge hasn't promulgated to all the local election officials in the country that make the decisions on how they're run and what tech they use. That's the real problem, not a lack of secure voting knowhow/tech.
swerveonem 8y ago
Excellent point, when you perform that thought experiment you end up with a set of technologies so close to a blockchain it actually makes sense to just use a blockchain.
Moodles 8y ago
This is pretty much how all projects and headlines about blockchain are created. X could be: the music industry, healthcare, space, pornography, universities, protecting your art, tracking your bananas in Laos or buying your weed. Those are all real ones that I could remember of the top of head btw. It's an utterly ridiculous field.
hndamien 8y ago
It is pretty obvious that nothing electronic is more secure and transparent than paper. Blockchains show the only thing that potentially could provide a solution. At this point in time for a secure election, it must be paper. If you want electronic, it is either going to involve a blockchain, or something even more radically different than anything that has been done before. If it isn't either of these two things, then I guarantee that it is less secure than paper, regardless of any efficiency gain which is moot.

This feels a bit backwards to me - is the goal to describe and implement a "secure election", or to apply blockchain to X?

by maldeh 8y ago

This feels a bit backwards to me - is the goal to describe and implement a "secure election", or to apply blockchain to X?

dragontamer 8y ago

Indeed. Furthermore, "secure elections" are a solved problem. Have paper ballots, and scan them later. If you have any reason to suspect the scanners, then throw away the scanners and then proceed by hand. There are statistical methods to count a small number by hand (+ corroborate with poll results) to ensure a degree of consistency. Chi-squared distributions and stuff (I'm not a mathematician, but I'm sure there's some statistical method to verify the results without counting everything by hand). The main problem with blockchain is that it requires everyone to trust the blockchain. With humans counting by hand, you don't require any trust. As long as the ballots are properly stored, you can always recount the results.

nixpulvis 8y ago
Calling "secure elections" a solved problem made me laugh.
- swerveonem 8y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. I laughed too. Shill obviously works for a problem.
  - nixpulvis 8y ago
    I remember back in college listening to a guest lecturer talk about the problems with electronic voting. It was very interesting. I think the entire political world is still feeling the wrath of the 21st century. Hopefully we all make it out alive.
CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
Paper ballots are fine for infrequent elections. But not for things a bit more ... liquid[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy
aeternus 8y ago
You still require trust with the paper ballots, there are multiple threat models: - System needs to ensure everyone votes only once - Ensure each person meets the qualifications to vote - Ensure ballots cannot be counterfeit or additional ballots inserted somehow - Ensure votes are confidential throughout the process - Ensure voters cannot prove their votes to others - Ensure the people counting are trusted or the results checked / verified - Ensure all ballots are actually counted One significant negative with the paper ballot method is that voters cannot confirm the last point. I have no way of confirming that my ballot was actually counted and contributed to the final tally's.
- foepys 8y ago
  To attack paper ballots you need people. Like thousands of people working with you to manipulate important elections directly at the source. With electronic voting, you potentially need a single person with a computer on the other side of the globe exploiting a security flaw, that will inevitably be there. Whoever claims to write bug free software is a conman. I also don't want to be able to verify my vote. If I can, that means that somebody else also can. Given how tech-illiterate the average human is, voting crypto keys will be littered all around the internet.
  - aeternus 8y ago
    >I also don't want to be able to verify my vote. If I can, that means that somebody else also can. Given how tech-illiterate the average human is, voting crypto keys will be littered all around the internet. Right, I should have been more clear. You typically do want voters to be able to prove that they voted and that their vote was counted, but you do not want voters to be able to prove the contents of their vote (who they voted for).
- DennisP 8y ago
  Some kinda famous cryptographers have designed verifiable paper voting systems: https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiPRshort.html https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiAnswers.html https://rangevoting.org/RivSmiAnswers.html https://rangevoting.org/SleatorCheapo.html https://rangevoting.org/SleatorCheapo.html
gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
For tallying results, trust has to be placed in the people and/or machines tallying the results. With a blockchain-based system, every voter would count everyone else's votes
- icebraining 8y ago
  How would you know every vote was registered in the blockchain?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - gnarcoregrizz 8y ago
    Because its a public, verifiable data structure. That's not to say it's perfect, it's subject to 51% attacks so yes votes could possibly be discarded in that case.
swerveonem 8y ago
This removes the cryptography aspects, which is what keeps the system and results verifiable after the fact. Of course the votes can be counted and statistical estimations of accuracy can be used to attempt to detect fraud but that can also be performed AFTER each individual vote is recorded on a blockchain. In fact the only reason not to utilize blockchain technology in election processes is to ensure the results can be manipulated.
- icebraining 8y ago
  What blockchain voting scheme(s) provide at least as much anonymity as paper ballots?
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Can you clarify this a bit? What unique security assurances are offered by a blockchain that cannot be provided by other cryptographic methods?

kenhwang 8y ago

I think "secure election" is one of the few uniquely viable use cases for blockchain. In my opinion, elections should be easily anonymized, verifiable, distributed, and resistant to bad actors. That seems like a slam dunk for the things blockchain claims to be good at. What's unique about blockchain compared to paper ballots is, everyone has access to every ballot if every ballot was recorded on the blockchain, which is unfeasible with physical paper ballots. The slow speed of consensus is also less of an issue for elections than it is for financial transactions. That being said, use of blockchain alone doens't make a election secure.

vkou 8y ago
The integrity of a paper ballot election is verifiable by anyone with a grade six level of education. A digital blockchain election is verifiable by a small percentage of the population, which consists of techno-wizards. Paper ballots win, hands-down, in that respect. Blockchains are better then opaque electronic voting machines, but not entirely better then paper.
- foepys 8y ago
  People may downvote you but I have never seen an explanation that tackles exactly this point. For paper ballots you can easily take anybody that completed elementary school to get a correct result. For blockchain, electronic voting, etc, you need highly skilled people. How can you be sure that this single person per voting district isn't screwing everybody over?
  - kosievdmerwe 8y ago
    There's also the fact that you can't verify that the verification done applies to each machine in the field. If your crypto system has non-verifiability of who you voted for as a requirement. How do you prove that the code actually running on the machine didn't change the vote? Especially seeing as actual machines have code other than the election software running on it, think touch screen controllers, etc..
monocasa 8y ago

SkyMarshal 8y ago

Yeah it's backwards. We need to first characterize how to implement a secure election, compile a criteria for that, then evaluate tech platforms against that. Given that experts already know how to secure elections and that traditional tech solves the problem just fine, Blockchain would almost certainly lose. Election tech experts like Verified Voting, Black Box Voting, and Ed Felton & co at Princeton already know how to secure elections, but for whatever reason that knowledge hasn't promulgated to all the local election officials in the country that make the decisions on how they're run and what tech they use. That's the real problem, not a lack of secure voting knowhow/tech.

swerveonem 8y ago

Excellent point, when you perform that thought experiment you end up with a set of technologies so close to a blockchain it actually makes sense to just use a blockchain.

Moodles 8y ago

This is pretty much how all projects and headlines about blockchain are created. X could be: the music industry, healthcare, space, pornography, universities, protecting your art, tracking your bananas in Laos or buying your weed. Those are all real ones that I could remember of the top of head btw. It's an utterly ridiculous field.

hndamien 8y ago

It is pretty obvious that nothing electronic is more secure and transparent than paper. Blockchains show the only thing that potentially could provide a solution. At this point in time for a secure election, it must be paper. If you want electronic, it is either going to involve a blockchain, or something even more radically different than anything that has been done before. If it isn't either of these two things, then I guarantee that it is less secure than paper, regardless of any efficiency gain which is moot.