2 ms·

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.
- greyhair 8y ago
  Cryptocurrencies are designed to be inefficient. You can perform 'valueless' BC using far less energy than bitcoin. Bitcoin is inherently limiting by design to long tail the mining of coins as the count draws down.
tim333 8y ago
The inefficiency can be a feature not a bug. How the process seems to work when I last voted was the ballot papers were numbered and they wrote the number next to my name when they gave it to me which prevents then just ticking x on another 1000 ballots to fix the result. However my privacy is protected by the fact that to see which way I voted you'd have to dig through hundreds of bits of paper and compare the number to a hand written list which is slow and hard to do without observers seeing. Make it electronic and you lose that - malware could download the lists in seconds without anyone noticing.

> 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.

greyhair 8y ago
Cryptocurrencies are designed to be inefficient. You can perform 'valueless' BC using far less energy than bitcoin. Bitcoin is inherently limiting by design to long tail the mining of coins as the count draws down.

tim333 8y ago

The inefficiency can be a feature not a bug. How the process seems to work when I last voted was the ballot papers were numbered and they wrote the number next to my name when they gave it to me which prevents then just ticking x on another 1000 ballots to fix the result. However my privacy is protected by the fact that to see which way I voted you'd have to dig through hundreds of bits of paper and compare the number to a hand written list which is slow and hard to do without observers seeing. Make it electronic and you lose that - malware could download the lists in seconds without anyone noticing.