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It would be a lot easier to trust an electronic voting system if it was open-source, open-hardware, and votes were recorded on a public blockchain.

mi100hael 7y ago
Voting is one of the very few use-cases I can think of where Blockchain would actually be a valuable and differentiating addition.
- jammygit 7y ago
  Im a blockchain noob, but if the election was driven by blockchain, how would one protect against Chinese mining warehouses trying to gain control of the network? What would a double spend attack look like? Again, just a blockchain noob asking noob questions
  - forgotmypw3 7y ago
    I don't think blockchain necessarily means anyone being able to make blocks.
    - jammygit 7y ago
      So the important part is the visibility of the blockchain, not the distributed control? One could still verify whether tampering had occurred?
      - forgotmypw3 7y ago
        In my forum project, I use blockchain-like elements in the sense that when one replies to an existing comment, they include its hash in the reply text, which is then PGP-signed. It is not a chain, however, more like a tree/web. And anyone can inspect the tree and re-verify its validity. What is on the tree, however, is decided by me, the webmaster-operator. If there are troll comments that I want removed, they're gone. But I cannot forge something by another user, because I do not have their private key. And anyone else can fork the forum and append to the tree in their own way, and I cannot stop them.
    - joshfraser 7y ago
      Distributed control is still useful. It makes it incredibly expensive to try and tamper with the results.
  - orev 7y ago
    Blockchain is not the same thing as cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is just one application of blockchain. Double spend wouldn’t exist because we’re not talking about money, and the voting servers don’t need to be run by random public people. You’re confusing too many things here.
  - nameless912 7y ago
    Herein lies the rub with blockchain systems. If they're public, they're attackable, and if they're private, they're slower, more power hungry, and less flexible than a plain old database. It's not a dumb question, but blockchain doesn't provide good answers :)
    - leereeves 7y ago
      I'm no fan of the blockchain, but this may be in the middle ground where blockchain makes sense: multiple independent trusted-but-not-completely parties verifying each other's actions.
      - nameless912 7y ago
        I still don't buy that blockchain is better than any of the other solutions that we've come up with for this problem, since (like with, for example, byzantine consensus) 50%+1 of actors being misbehaved breaks any security guarantee.
      - munk-a 7y ago
        Democracies already have some reliance on trusted authorities, so why not just leverage those and assign the trust of the voting system to those established trusted authorities? Also, blockchains are fun - they are not a magical salve.
    - stale2002 7y ago
      Blockchain in this context just means that everyone signs cryptographic messages, in a public database. That's it.
  - joshfraser 7y ago
    Really we're talking about public key encryption. In an ideal scenario, every voter would have a public and a private key. The government would have a list of public keys to determine who is eligible to vote. Each voter would hold their own private keys. Each vote is signed with their private key and then published to an immutable ledger that everyone can audit.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    A 51% attack would look like one source submitting a blockchain that's different from everyone else's, and effectively saying "my chain is longer so use it instead". Very noticeable, even if it might end up needing to be sorted out by courts instead of computers.
  - gcb0 7y ago
    51% attacks only exist if the clients can fork. if your chain is not forkable (i.e you already know the size for an election thanks to census and voter records) there is no need for it as there is no need for miners even. most other comments in this thread confuses blockchain with cryptocurrencies.
  - stale2002 7y ago
    Blockchains have nothing to do with proof of work or mining. There just wouldn't be any mining. "Blockchain" in this context just means that everyone cryptographicly signs messages in a public database.
- achenatx 7y ago
  all social media (or any system) where you dont trust the entities that are holding your data are candidates for blockchain. With blockchain based databases you can have entities that store massive amounts of data encrypted, but they cant read it or access it. The blockchain controls access to it. The data itself doesnt need to be replicated, just the access control. This resolves the issue of very slow blockchain databases. The storage providers can charge the blockchain for storage and access. blockchain disintermediates access control, storage, and display. With open protocols for data, you could use any number of reader clients to access your (and other) data.
rectang 7y ago
But such a system is incompatible with the secret ballot, and is therefore vulnerable to voter coercion. Didn't vote for the right candidate? You're fired "for performance reasons".
- orev 7y ago
  The votes can be public but that doesn’t mean the data needs to include information that identifies the voter.
  - gcb0 7y ago
    then what's the point? can you list a single use case that would make sense with this idea?
    - orev 7y ago
      Yes. Voting. That’s how voting works. You go to the polling place, you confirm your identity with one person, then you go to another person to get the ballot. There is no linkage between your ballot and your identity, as they are done in separate and independent steps.
- joshfraser 7y ago
  It would be pseudo-anonymous like Bitcoin. You would keep the mapping between public keys and real-world identities private. But perhaps some percentage of people would choose to waive their right to privacy, further strengthening trust in the system. Statistically, the public voters should be in line with the final outcome.
  - orev 7y ago
    There’s no reason to have identifying information at all. That would be handled at the voting location just like it is now. Blockchain voting doesn’t mean you can then vote over the Internet — you’d just have a better type of system in place at the voting locations.
brighton36 7y ago
Everything is easier with blockchain. A blockchain is a database with virtue.
- joshfraser 7y ago
  It's actually more challenging from a technical perspective, but it's easier to trust.
orev 7y ago
It would bring up extra risks as the machines would most likely then need to be connected to the Internet to be able to participate in the blockchain network. Otherwise the reason we don’t have that is because there’s no money in it. Maybe if we allow the voting machines to also mine cryptocurrency when sitting idle...
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
Paper ballots solve that problem pretty easily
deogeo 7y ago
Once in the voting booth, how do you know the hardware or software haven't been replaced or tampered with? How would election officials know it? Open-source/hardware won't help you - it's still fundamentally a black box, and must be provable secure solely based on its inputs and outputs.
jandrese 7y ago
Sure. You get to be the one who explains how the Blockchain works to a bunch of octogenarians in Florida who can't quite figure out how a double sided paper ballot works. Voting is already complicated enough. There are way too few people who fully understand all of the security implications of the Blockchain and all of the implementation details you need to get correct to make this a workable solution on the national level.
specialist 7y ago
What makes the Australian Ballot (private voting, public counting) is the one-way hash of dropping one's ballot into the box. All of the crypto systems I've studied try to accomplish the same with hash collisions. So that individual ballots get lost within the herd. Unfortunately, due the complexity of our ballots and the small size of our jurisdictions (elections are administrated per precinct), those hash collisions don't happen. One remedy may be to split complicated ballots into many simple ballots. As of yet, I've not seen an electronic voting system proposal which states under which circumstances it will (likely) preserve the secret ballot and public count. A failing I consider to be gross intellectual malfeasance, willful ignorance, or both.
munk-a 7y ago
If you had just omitted the blockchain portion you'd be correct - why oh why does everyone try to throw blockchain into everything.

mi100hael 7y ago

Voting is one of the very few use-cases I can think of where Blockchain would actually be a valuable and differentiating addition.

jammygit 7y ago
Im a blockchain noob, but if the election was driven by blockchain, how would one protect against Chinese mining warehouses trying to gain control of the network? What would a double spend attack look like? Again, just a blockchain noob asking noob questions
- forgotmypw3 7y ago
  I don't think blockchain necessarily means anyone being able to make blocks.
  - jammygit 7y ago
    So the important part is the visibility of the blockchain, not the distributed control? One could still verify whether tampering had occurred?
    - forgotmypw3 7y ago
      In my forum project, I use blockchain-like elements in the sense that when one replies to an existing comment, they include its hash in the reply text, which is then PGP-signed. It is not a chain, however, more like a tree/web. And anyone can inspect the tree and re-verify its validity. What is on the tree, however, is decided by me, the webmaster-operator. If there are troll comments that I want removed, they're gone. But I cannot forge something by another user, because I do not have their private key. And anyone else can fork the forum and append to the tree in their own way, and I cannot stop them.
  - joshfraser 7y ago
    Distributed control is still useful. It makes it incredibly expensive to try and tamper with the results.
- orev 7y ago
  Blockchain is not the same thing as cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is just one application of blockchain. Double spend wouldn’t exist because we’re not talking about money, and the voting servers don’t need to be run by random public people. You’re confusing too many things here.
- nameless912 7y ago
  Herein lies the rub with blockchain systems. If they're public, they're attackable, and if they're private, they're slower, more power hungry, and less flexible than a plain old database. It's not a dumb question, but blockchain doesn't provide good answers :)
  - leereeves 7y ago
    I'm no fan of the blockchain, but this may be in the middle ground where blockchain makes sense: multiple independent trusted-but-not-completely parties verifying each other's actions.
    - nameless912 7y ago
      I still don't buy that blockchain is better than any of the other solutions that we've come up with for this problem, since (like with, for example, byzantine consensus) 50%+1 of actors being misbehaved breaks any security guarantee.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      Democracies already have some reliance on trusted authorities, so why not just leverage those and assign the trust of the voting system to those established trusted authorities? Also, blockchains are fun - they are not a magical salve.
  - stale2002 7y ago
    Blockchain in this context just means that everyone signs cryptographic messages, in a public database. That's it.
- joshfraser 7y ago
  Really we're talking about public key encryption. In an ideal scenario, every voter would have a public and a private key. The government would have a list of public keys to determine who is eligible to vote. Each voter would hold their own private keys. Each vote is signed with their private key and then published to an immutable ledger that everyone can audit.
- leereeves 7y ago
  A 51% attack would look like one source submitting a blockchain that's different from everyone else's, and effectively saying "my chain is longer so use it instead". Very noticeable, even if it might end up needing to be sorted out by courts instead of computers.
- gcb0 7y ago
  51% attacks only exist if the clients can fork. if your chain is not forkable (i.e you already know the size for an election thanks to census and voter records) there is no need for it as there is no need for miners even. most other comments in this thread confuses blockchain with cryptocurrencies.
- stale2002 7y ago
  Blockchains have nothing to do with proof of work or mining. There just wouldn't be any mining. "Blockchain" in this context just means that everyone cryptographicly signs messages in a public database.
achenatx 7y ago
all social media (or any system) where you dont trust the entities that are holding your data are candidates for blockchain. With blockchain based databases you can have entities that store massive amounts of data encrypted, but they cant read it or access it. The blockchain controls access to it. The data itself doesnt need to be replicated, just the access control. This resolves the issue of very slow blockchain databases. The storage providers can charge the blockchain for storage and access. blockchain disintermediates access control, storage, and display. With open protocols for data, you could use any number of reader clients to access your (and other) data.

rectang 7y ago

But such a system is incompatible with the secret ballot, and is therefore vulnerable to voter coercion. Didn't vote for the right candidate? You're fired "for performance reasons".

orev 7y ago
The votes can be public but that doesn’t mean the data needs to include information that identifies the voter.
- gcb0 7y ago
  then what's the point? can you list a single use case that would make sense with this idea?
  - orev 7y ago
    Yes. Voting. That’s how voting works. You go to the polling place, you confirm your identity with one person, then you go to another person to get the ballot. There is no linkage between your ballot and your identity, as they are done in separate and independent steps.
joshfraser 7y ago
It would be pseudo-anonymous like Bitcoin. You would keep the mapping between public keys and real-world identities private. But perhaps some percentage of people would choose to waive their right to privacy, further strengthening trust in the system. Statistically, the public voters should be in line with the final outcome.
- orev 7y ago
  There’s no reason to have identifying information at all. That would be handled at the voting location just like it is now. Blockchain voting doesn’t mean you can then vote over the Internet — you’d just have a better type of system in place at the voting locations.

brighton36 7y ago

Everything is easier with blockchain. A blockchain is a database with virtue.

joshfraser 7y ago
It's actually more challenging from a technical perspective, but it's easier to trust.

orev 7y ago

It would bring up extra risks as the machines would most likely then need to be connected to the Internet to be able to participate in the blockchain network. Otherwise the reason we don’t have that is because there’s no money in it. Maybe if we allow the voting machines to also mine cryptocurrency when sitting idle...

thatfrenchguy 7y ago

Paper ballots solve that problem pretty easily

deogeo 7y ago

Once in the voting booth, how do you know the hardware or software haven't been replaced or tampered with? How would election officials know it? Open-source/hardware won't help you - it's still fundamentally a black box, and must be provable secure solely based on its inputs and outputs.

jandrese 7y ago

Sure. You get to be the one who explains how the Blockchain works to a bunch of octogenarians in Florida who can't quite figure out how a double sided paper ballot works. Voting is already complicated enough. There are way too few people who fully understand all of the security implications of the Blockchain and all of the implementation details you need to get correct to make this a workable solution on the national level.

specialist 7y ago

What makes the Australian Ballot (private voting, public counting) is the one-way hash of dropping one's ballot into the box. All of the crypto systems I've studied try to accomplish the same with hash collisions. So that individual ballots get lost within the herd. Unfortunately, due the complexity of our ballots and the small size of our jurisdictions (elections are administrated per precinct), those hash collisions don't happen. One remedy may be to split complicated ballots into many simple ballots. As of yet, I've not seen an electronic voting system proposal which states under which circumstances it will (likely) preserve the secret ballot and public count. A failing I consider to be gross intellectual malfeasance, willful ignorance, or both.

munk-a 7y ago

If you had just omitted the blockchain portion you'd be correct - why oh why does everyone try to throw blockchain into everything.