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Hmm, not sure that would work though. What happens when an ID is stolen? If there is nothing mapping "John Smith" to "ID #12345", then you have no way to revok

Hmm, not sure that would work though. What happens when an ID is stolen? If there is nothing mapping "John Smith" to "ID #12345", then you have no way to revoke IDs because you cannot know if the person claiming the ID is the true owner. Wouldn't that mean stealing IDs will be virtually un punishable, and reselling them very lucrative?

xorcist 6y ago
You don't want to issue new tokens either, because you can't know for sure that the token was really stolen. In which it won't take many users who demonstratably can't vote because someone stolen their token for someone to question the outcome. The only point of democratic elections is the legitimacy of the result.
- jlokier 6y ago
  When a large-scale vote is really tight, there will be people questioning its legitimacy anyway, no matter if it's technically correct. When a vote outcome is clearly in favour of one direction, people don't tend to argue about the legitimacy of it, provided the process was reasonable enough. In that case, the numbers might be argued, but not the outcome unless there is a stronger belief in vote-rigging or voter-suppression. In the UK, it's quite easy for a small number of individuals to cheat in elections and double-vote, due to how voting wards are assigned when people move home, or have multiple places they live. Or to cheat by pretending to be someone else. But we assume cheating isn't widespread enough to matter in the grand scheme of things (even if the occasional "wrong" MP did get in on a knife edge), and consider ease of voter participation to be a sounder basis of governance, compared with draconian identity-tracking schemes that deter representation because of all the actual people who for one reason or another would not participate.
  - Galanwe 6y ago
    While I agree with you on the big picture, at the individual level, it's becomes really hard to justify. Imagine the following conversation: - "officier, my wallet just got robbed, I had my voting digital card in it, what can I do?" - "nothing, anyway a single vote does not matter in the overall election"

xorcist 6y ago

You don't want to issue new tokens either, because you can't know for sure that the token was really stolen. In which it won't take many users who demonstratably can't vote because someone stolen their token for someone to question the outcome. The only point of democratic elections is the legitimacy of the result.

jlokier 6y ago
When a large-scale vote is really tight, there will be people questioning its legitimacy anyway, no matter if it's technically correct. When a vote outcome is clearly in favour of one direction, people don't tend to argue about the legitimacy of it, provided the process was reasonable enough. In that case, the numbers might be argued, but not the outcome unless there is a stronger belief in vote-rigging or voter-suppression. In the UK, it's quite easy for a small number of individuals to cheat in elections and double-vote, due to how voting wards are assigned when people move home, or have multiple places they live. Or to cheat by pretending to be someone else. But we assume cheating isn't widespread enough to matter in the grand scheme of things (even if the occasional "wrong" MP did get in on a knife edge), and consider ease of voter participation to be a sounder basis of governance, compared with draconian identity-tracking schemes that deter representation because of all the actual people who for one reason or another would not participate.
- Galanwe 6y ago
  While I agree with you on the big picture, at the individual level, it's becomes really hard to justify. Imagine the following conversation: - "officier, my wallet just got robbed, I had my voting digital card in it, what can I do?" - "nothing, anyway a single vote does not matter in the overall election"