We don't need blockchain, but some cryptographic ideas that have become more popular in recent years thanks to blockchain would be great (mainly pubkey crypto).

We don't need blockchain, but some cryptographic ideas that have become more popular in recent years thanks to blockchain would be great (mainly pubkey crypto). 1. Issue everyone a cryptographic signature card with a private key on it. 2. This card has a pin and allows the user to digitally sign any document with a private key associated with that citizen/resident. 3. This private key never leaves the card. Overall, this is fairly similar to how hardware wallets for blockchains work. 4. For voting, you can either download your ballot online, or go in person to a voting booth. 5. You fill out your digital ballot, then sign it with your private key / card (again, either on your own computer or a ballot box machine does this for you), and your signed ballot is uploaded to a central repository. This central repository is not a blockchain, it is merely a place that has each users public key. When you need to count the votes, you validate everyone's ballots with public keys and tally them in a second. 6. As proof you have voted, the machine you uploaded your ballot to in turn sends you a payload which has been signed with your public key, and therefore can only be decrypted again using your private key card. This is how you know your vote will be counted. [Pros] - Replaces the need for mail-in voting and worrying about ballots arriving at some arbitrary election deadline. A citizen with their auth card can vote from anywhere in the world. Elections during crises would be a non-issue (unless the crisis brings down the internet, though I doubt a crisis that brings down the internet would leave a postal system unscathed – esp. once Starlink is live). - All votes can be counted and re-counted in seconds. - Fraud seems difficult with this system. You would either need to compromise the auth card issuing authority (difficult and assuredly traceable, though still a SPoF) or steal people's cards and know their PINs. Cards could obviously be canceled / reissued with a high-level of identity verification. - The auth card becomes your new identity provider for basically every authentication you need (getting a bank account, signing a document, etc) and is much, much superior to the current status quo where the validation is either a digital (handwriting) signature or "what is your address and SSN?". [Cons] - You need to give everyone a card. Not a big deal because we already are dishing out SSN cards, DLs, passports, birth certs, etc without too much difficulty. Also you'll need to give a card terminal[1] to anyone who wants to do things from home. - You need to be able to interact with digital technology. Honestly this shouldn't be much of a problem. If you can use a credit card, you should be able to use this digital auth card. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Barclays_Pinsentry_5920.jpg/487px-Barclays_Pinsentry_5920.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Ba...