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I think blockchain is staring us in the face as a solution to the collapse of trust in institutions. For example, if all votes were stored on a permissioned blo

I think blockchain is staring us in the face as a solution to the collapse of trust in institutions. For example, if all votes were stored on a permissioned blockchain, audits would be trivial. If we layered it on top of our existing (bad) election technologies and did a post-election comparison of accuracy, I bet it would be far more accurate.

SilasX 8y ago
If you don't care about keeping a voter's vote secret, the problem becomes a lot easier to begin with, and permits a lot of non-blockchain solutions. Like publishing votes in the newspaper.
- seibelj 8y ago
  But you can keep them secret and selectively reveal them to auditors, etc. Just like they do now, when they reveal them during a recount.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Current audits don't see information that connects a ballot to a voter.
theoh 8y ago
Who allocates the credentials that each citizen needs to vote? There's no way around the need for trusted institutions in this case.
Ensorceled 8y ago
Or, stored on paper with a bunch of both independent and representative people counting the paper and ensuring the newspapers reported their riding correctly. My mom was a returning officer for years and I find it horrifying to watch the US gum up their election systems in the name of progress (or, maybe, in the name of election fraud).
- seibelj 8y ago
  But paper is extremely inefficient? We can do so much better using cryptography and electronics
  - sigstoat 8y ago
    > We can do so much better using cryptography and electronics no, we can't > But paper is extremely inefficient? efficiency is less important than correctness.
    - seibelj 8y ago
      > no, we can't Well, that settles it!
    - g45y45 8y ago
      I would argue its about integrity from subversion, rather than correctness. You can use electronic records and cryptography to be more correct than paper, in general. Electronic voting is easier to subvert than paper ballots. Thats why voting should be on paper, hand counted. The only group wanting instant results is the media for their reporting. Everyone else is happy to wait for something so important.
      - greyhair 8y ago
        Your username is what I use when I want to say 'thank you' to a smart ass. Awesome.
  - neilk 8y ago
    Blockchains are literally the most inefficient way we've ever discovered to store and secure data. Paper is by far the most distributed, understandable, efficient, and secure mechanism we have discovered for obtaining, securing, and tallying votes by humans. It can be practically tamper-proof given a modest amount of trust and scrutiny. I don't know why, but Americans of every political leaning seem to think that elections are some incredibly hard brain surgery problem. They aren't.
projektfu 8y ago
If you can't trust "institutions" there is nothing to vote on.
dmitriid 8y ago
No. Blockchain isn't a solution to that. Why? A long answer is here (and many other answers) here: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle... (read part one too). tl;dr Blockchain systems do not magically make the data in them accurate or the people entering the data trustworthy, they merely enable you to audit whether it has been tampered with. A person who sprayed pesticides on a mango can still enter onto a blockchain system that the mangoes were organic. A corrupt government can create a blockchain system to count the votes and just allocate an extra million addresses to their cronies. An investment fund whose charter is written in software can still misallocate funds. ... Before blockchain can even get involved, you need to trust that voter registration is done fairly, that ballots are given only to eligible voters, that the votes are made anonymously rather than bought or intimidated, that the vote displayed by the balloting system is the same as the vote recorded, and that no extra votes are given to the political cronies to cast. Blockchain makes none of these problems easier and many of them harder—but more importantly, solving them in a blockchain context requires a set of awkward workarounds that undermine the core premise. So we know the entries are valid, let’s allow only trusted nonprofits to make entries—and you’re back at the good old “classic” ledger. In fact, if you look at any blockchain solution, inevitably you’ll find an awkward workaround to re-create trusted parties in a trustless world.
- seibelj 8y ago
  You can audit a small percentage, verify with the original voter it was accurate, and get a statistically significant result about the accuracy.
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    So you need a trusted party to perform an audit, a trusted party to verify votes with original voters (so, no secret/anonymous voting, so you need a trusted party to handle personal data, a trusted party to destroy that data after elections so that the winner doesn't abuse that data) etc. So, you mean "solving them in a blockchain context requires a set of awkward workarounds that undermine the core premise... In fact, if you look at any blockchain solution, inevitably you’ll find an awkward workaround to re-create trusted parties in a trustless world." So what problem exactly does blockchain solve for voting that isn't already solved better and more efficiently now?
ceejayoz 8y ago
> I think blockchain is staring us in the face as a solution to the collapse of trust in institutions. In a world where people genuinely believe Hillary Clinton received millions of votes from illegal immigrants, I don't see how a specific (and complex) technological implementation is going to solve those trust issues.
- greyhair 8y ago
  Voodoo magic hidden from view would finalize the collapse. Like the great Oz behind the curtain.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
I don't think you can fix the problem of lack of trust with building systems that don't require trust. The whole point of trust is to enable tremendous efficiency gains over trustless systems.

SilasX 8y ago

If you don't care about keeping a voter's vote secret, the problem becomes a lot easier to begin with, and permits a lot of non-blockchain solutions. Like publishing votes in the newspaper.

seibelj 8y ago
But you can keep them secret and selectively reveal them to auditors, etc. Just like they do now, when they reveal them during a recount.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Current audits don't see information that connects a ballot to a voter.

theoh 8y ago

Who allocates the credentials that each citizen needs to vote? There's no way around the need for trusted institutions in this case.

Ensorceled 8y ago

Or, stored on paper with a bunch of both independent and representative people counting the paper and ensuring the newspapers reported their riding correctly. My mom was a returning officer for years and I find it horrifying to watch the US gum up their election systems in the name of progress (or, maybe, in the name of election fraud).

seibelj 8y ago
But paper is extremely inefficient? We can do so much better using cryptography and electronics
- sigstoat 8y ago
  > We can do so much better using cryptography and electronics no, we can't > But paper is extremely inefficient? efficiency is less important than correctness.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    > no, we can't Well, that settles it!
  - g45y45 8y ago
    I would argue its about integrity from subversion, rather than correctness. You can use electronic records and cryptography to be more correct than paper, in general. Electronic voting is easier to subvert than paper ballots. Thats why voting should be on paper, hand counted. The only group wanting instant results is the media for their reporting. Everyone else is happy to wait for something so important.
    - greyhair 8y ago
      Your username is what I use when I want to say 'thank you' to a smart ass. Awesome.
- neilk 8y ago
  Blockchains are literally the most inefficient way we've ever discovered to store and secure data. Paper is by far the most distributed, understandable, efficient, and secure mechanism we have discovered for obtaining, securing, and tallying votes by humans. It can be practically tamper-proof given a modest amount of trust and scrutiny. I don't know why, but Americans of every political leaning seem to think that elections are some incredibly hard brain surgery problem. They aren't.

projektfu 8y ago

If you can't trust "institutions" there is nothing to vote on.

dmitriid 8y ago

No. Blockchain isn't a solution to that. Why? A long answer is here (and many other answers) here: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle... (read part one too). tl;dr Blockchain systems do not magically make the data in them accurate or the people entering the data trustworthy, they merely enable you to audit whether it has been tampered with. A person who sprayed pesticides on a mango can still enter onto a blockchain system that the mangoes were organic. A corrupt government can create a blockchain system to count the votes and just allocate an extra million addresses to their cronies. An investment fund whose charter is written in software can still misallocate funds. ... Before blockchain can even get involved, you need to trust that voter registration is done fairly, that ballots are given only to eligible voters, that the votes are made anonymously rather than bought or intimidated, that the vote displayed by the balloting system is the same as the vote recorded, and that no extra votes are given to the political cronies to cast. Blockchain makes none of these problems easier and many of them harder—but more importantly, solving them in a blockchain context requires a set of awkward workarounds that undermine the core premise. So we know the entries are valid, let’s allow only trusted nonprofits to make entries—and you’re back at the good old “classic” ledger. In fact, if you look at any blockchain solution, inevitably you’ll find an awkward workaround to re-create trusted parties in a trustless world.

seibelj 8y ago
You can audit a small percentage, verify with the original voter it was accurate, and get a statistically significant result about the accuracy.
- dmitriid 8y ago
  So you need a trusted party to perform an audit, a trusted party to verify votes with original voters (so, no secret/anonymous voting, so you need a trusted party to handle personal data, a trusted party to destroy that data after elections so that the winner doesn't abuse that data) etc. So, you mean "solving them in a blockchain context requires a set of awkward workarounds that undermine the core premise... In fact, if you look at any blockchain solution, inevitably you’ll find an awkward workaround to re-create trusted parties in a trustless world." So what problem exactly does blockchain solve for voting that isn't already solved better and more efficiently now?

ceejayoz 8y ago

> I think blockchain is staring us in the face as a solution to the collapse of trust in institutions. In a world where people genuinely believe Hillary Clinton received millions of votes from illegal immigrants, I don't see how a specific (and complex) technological implementation is going to solve those trust issues.

greyhair 8y ago
Voodoo magic hidden from view would finalize the collapse. Like the great Oz behind the curtain.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

I don't think you can fix the problem of lack of trust with building systems that don't require trust. The whole point of trust is to enable tremendous efficiency gains over trustless systems.