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> Understanding at a high level "experts use fancy math to make my vote private and immutable" is easy but also requires a lot of trust. A lot more trust than

> Understanding at a high level "experts use fancy math to make my vote private and immutable" is easy but also requires a lot of trust. A lot more trust than the current system, where voters and observers can at least believe what their eyes see. With a digital system nothing they see happening necessarily means anything! They can't verify it, and thus they shouldn't trust it.

godelski 6y ago
I'm not sure this is meaningfully different than what currently happens. Can you expand on this more? Currently we don't have paper trails. We don't have good ways to verify that our vote was counted and that it has the correct value to it. An immutable data structure helps solve this, especially if it is auditable. I'm all for paper trails, and I think they are necessary, but our current system isn't exactly transparent either. Logistically this is impractical. We've always relied on a subset of people to tell us it is trustworthy. I.e. the volunteers that count. If you can have that and do cryptographic arithmetic so that anyone with a computer can verify the results, that's more transparent, not less. I mean I think there's this idea that people counting physical ballots in a rushed and hectic environment has high accuracy. That sounds like a naive assumption to me. But what is that error? 0.5%? 1%? For the most party elections are not won by that margin and when they are a recount is issued (and low and behold, numbers change slightly. Proving that the counting is imperfect but good enough).
charwalker 6y ago
I'm not defending the blockchain solution posted here but I do think the electronic voting aspect of the current system is at least as bad to lay people. Existing machines are often old, unpatched, and a big target that is mostly protected by people in the room looking for odd behavior or worse. I think we need a more secure system to expand options for electronic voting and counting but it needs to have a paper backbone for true reliability.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  Ah, when I say “current system” I mean paper ballots. I forget that the US sometimes uses machines :(

godelski 6y ago

I'm not sure this is meaningfully different than what currently happens. Can you expand on this more? Currently we don't have paper trails. We don't have good ways to verify that our vote was counted and that it has the correct value to it. An immutable data structure helps solve this, especially if it is auditable. I'm all for paper trails, and I think they are necessary, but our current system isn't exactly transparent either. Logistically this is impractical. We've always relied on a subset of people to tell us it is trustworthy. I.e. the volunteers that count. If you can have that and do cryptographic arithmetic so that anyone with a computer can verify the results, that's more transparent, not less. I mean I think there's this idea that people counting physical ballots in a rushed and hectic environment has high accuracy. That sounds like a naive assumption to me. But what is that error? 0.5%? 1%? For the most party elections are not won by that margin and when they are a recount is issued (and low and behold, numbers change slightly. Proving that the counting is imperfect but good enough).

charwalker 6y ago

I'm not defending the blockchain solution posted here but I do think the electronic voting aspect of the current system is at least as bad to lay people. Existing machines are often old, unpatched, and a big target that is mostly protected by people in the room looking for odd behavior or worse. I think we need a more secure system to expand options for electronic voting and counting but it needs to have a paper backbone for true reliability.

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
Ah, when I say “current system” I mean paper ballots. I forget that the US sometimes uses machines :(