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>After voting, you could also give every voter a "receipt" where they could go online and check in the public blockchain to confirm that their vote was counted

>After voting, you could also give every voter a "receipt" where they could go online and check in the public blockchain to confirm that their vote was counted successfully. The problem with verifiable voting has always been that it opens the market to vote-selling. If you can prove how you voted, your vote can be sold for a significant amount of money -- or worse, your employer insisting you vote a certain way, and asking for your receipt after. This won't work until there's a mechanism where you can confirm your vote while also having plausible deniability.

rodgerd 6y ago
Or, more likely, vote blackmail.
- Terr_ 6y ago
  I think you mean extortion. Blackmail is more specific, and implies a threat to reveal a secret. For example, an employer who threatens to fire employees who "vote wrong" would not be blackmail.
jjeaff 6y ago
You simply wouldn't identify the person making the vote. You are assigned a random identifier that is actually publicly available. So if I vote and give you my identifier to prove how I voted, you have no way of verifying if I am giving you my actual receipt or just some other receipt from the publicly accessible register of voters. The only way to truly validate the vote would be to match the receipt id with the internally held ballot that has your pii on it.
- parliament32 6y ago
  Then how do you prove x% of the voters for candidate A weren't just given the same identifier? This'd defeat the purpose of being able to verify your vote in the first place, something unique to you has to be in the record too.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Point is, you can verify your -own- vote only because you have the identifier that was given you. You can also see all the other votes and their identifiers, you just can't tell which people made which vote. Only the individual voter knows. i.e. I can go look online and knowing that I am voter abc123, I can confirm my vote was counted correctly. I can also see vote def456 but I don't know who it belongs to.
    - parliament32 6y ago
      Say we have 5 people voting. I know that 4/5 are going to vote for candidate A, but I don't like that, so I publish: abc - A def - A ghi - B jkl - B mno - B Then I simply give all the people who voted for A either abc or def. They all think they're identifying themselves, when really they're sharing identifiers.
mariusor 6y ago
I think coercion is the biggest issue with online electronic voting. In paper ballot format it's illegal to have someone else in the booth with you, but if everyone votes from home, there's no way to guarantee that the person voting doesn't do it some obligation.

rodgerd 6y ago

Or, more likely, vote blackmail.

Terr_ 6y ago
I think you mean extortion. Blackmail is more specific, and implies a threat to reveal a secret. For example, an employer who threatens to fire employees who "vote wrong" would not be blackmail.

jjeaff 6y ago

You simply wouldn't identify the person making the vote. You are assigned a random identifier that is actually publicly available. So if I vote and give you my identifier to prove how I voted, you have no way of verifying if I am giving you my actual receipt or just some other receipt from the publicly accessible register of voters. The only way to truly validate the vote would be to match the receipt id with the internally held ballot that has your pii on it.

parliament32 6y ago
Then how do you prove x% of the voters for candidate A weren't just given the same identifier? This'd defeat the purpose of being able to verify your vote in the first place, something unique to you has to be in the record too.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Point is, you can verify your -own- vote only because you have the identifier that was given you. You can also see all the other votes and their identifiers, you just can't tell which people made which vote. Only the individual voter knows. i.e. I can go look online and knowing that I am voter abc123, I can confirm my vote was counted correctly. I can also see vote def456 but I don't know who it belongs to.
  - parliament32 6y ago
    Say we have 5 people voting. I know that 4/5 are going to vote for candidate A, but I don't like that, so I publish: abc - A def - A ghi - B jkl - B mno - B Then I simply give all the people who voted for A either abc or def. They all think they're identifying themselves, when really they're sharing identifiers.

mariusor 6y ago

I think coercion is the biggest issue with online electronic voting. In paper ballot format it's illegal to have someone else in the booth with you, but if everyone votes from home, there's no way to guarantee that the person voting doesn't do it some obligation.