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I think "secure election" is one of the few uniquely viable use cases for blockchain. In my opinion, elections should be easily anonymized, verifiable, distribu

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
Elections should also not allow someone to verify how they voted after the fact. I'm not sure how blockchains allow for that.
- kenhwang 8y ago
  I think a way around this is: everyone gets randomly generated keys every election, like how everyone gets randomly numbered paper ballots. Currently, you can check if your numbered ballot was counted after you voted, but you can't verify the ballot wasn't tampered with. With keys, you can verify your vote was counted and not tampered with. If you don't want people to know how you voted, destroy your key. I'll admit that this still has the some of the same flaws as paper ballots: government doesn't track which key/ballot is assigned to you, and effectively centralized issuing of keys/ballots. But the advantage is: it's harder to forge or tamper with a ballot
  - amelius 8y ago
    Someone could still force you (physically, blackmail, etc) to give them your key.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Or just pay you. A huge portion of the populace would vote "the correct way" for a remarkably tiny kickback. We saw rampant vote buying during the gilded age.
    - kenhwang 8y ago
      Sure, just like how you can just steal physical absentee ballots out of mailboxes and mail them in. There's no such thing as perfect security. The problem of secure elections is how secure is secure enough? How many keys/ballots can you feasibly steal before getting caught? Is that number significant enough to change an election? Historically, it hasn't been.
      - amelius 8y ago

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

Elections should also not allow someone to verify how they voted after the fact. I'm not sure how blockchains allow for that.

kenhwang 8y ago
I think a way around this is: everyone gets randomly generated keys every election, like how everyone gets randomly numbered paper ballots. Currently, you can check if your numbered ballot was counted after you voted, but you can't verify the ballot wasn't tampered with. With keys, you can verify your vote was counted and not tampered with. If you don't want people to know how you voted, destroy your key. I'll admit that this still has the some of the same flaws as paper ballots: government doesn't track which key/ballot is assigned to you, and effectively centralized issuing of keys/ballots. But the advantage is: it's harder to forge or tamper with a ballot
- amelius 8y ago
  Someone could still force you (physically, blackmail, etc) to give them your key.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Or just pay you. A huge portion of the populace would vote "the correct way" for a remarkably tiny kickback. We saw rampant vote buying during the gilded age.
  - kenhwang 8y ago
    Sure, just like how you can just steal physical absentee ballots out of mailboxes and mail them in. There's no such thing as perfect security. The problem of secure elections is how secure is secure enough? How many keys/ballots can you feasibly steal before getting caught? Is that number significant enough to change an election? Historically, it hasn't been.
    - amelius 8y ago