3 ms·

I’m not a statistician or political scientist, but my intuition would say that it is probably easy to defeat any given statistical analysis of voting data, but

I’m not a statistician or political scientist, but my intuition would say that it is probably easy to defeat any given statistical analysis of voting data, but would be difficult to defeat two or more simultaneously. In cryptographic terms, it might be possible to find a collision in MD5 or SHA1, but finding a collision in both for the same target payload would be significantly more difficult. This is actually a very valid use of blockchain, imho, that would go very far in securing elections, make remote online voting more secure, and provide a public, auditable, immutable log.

michaelmrose 6y ago
- How does this work and simultaneously protect the secret ballot. For example how do I as an outside audit it if I can't check the a vote for foo wasn't counted as a vote for bar. I know in theory you could provide a means for THEM to verify it and again you have broken the secret ballot and they can prove to others how they voted. - With one technology used to secure the entire election on which hinges trillions of dollars and control of the most powerful military in the world how do you know that a singular exploit wouldn't allow you to forge the election. - Given that the functioning or non functioning would rely on crypto instead of things people understand like counting marks on paper how would you ever expect regular people to trust it?
- tcgv 6y ago
  For one, a blockchain based voting system would allow individual voters to ensure that their votes haven't been tampered with, without breaking anonymity. If one or more voters fail to check their vote registered in the blockchain, they could submit a complain providing their voting key and voting receipt (this receipt could be any proof of vote, like a public verifiable signature provided by the blockchain at the time of voting)
  - rjmunro 6y ago
    The main reason you can't force people to vote for you is that once they get in the polling booth, no one knows how they specifically voted. If you allow people to "check their vote" later, an attacker could verify that they voted in the way the attacker wanted.
    - tcgv 6y ago
      You're right, this approach would require a strong protection against deanonymization of votes, which could allow attackers to guess who voted for each candidate, for instance according to voting time and location.
      - GauntletWizard 6y ago
        Attackers don’t need to guess. They can equally strongarm the information. Under any “blockchain” based voting system, what is preventing your boss from saying “Sit down in this chair and log into the system and let me see who you voted for”? The answer is: Nothing prevents that. So long as you allow checking who you voted for afterwards, you allow the participants to verifiably disclose their votes. This is precisely what secret votes are guarding against: This prevents vote-harvesting schemes where a corporation forces its workers (or otherwise buys) verified votes. They can pay you to vote X, but they cannot verify that transaction: You can take their money and vote Y.
        tcgv 6y ago
        Great point, didn't think about that. A verification without disclosure mechanism would be required then, not sure if that is feasible though.

michaelmrose 6y ago

- How does this work and simultaneously protect the secret ballot. For example how do I as an outside audit it if I can't check the a vote for foo wasn't counted as a vote for bar. I know in theory you could provide a means for THEM to verify it and again you have broken the secret ballot and they can prove to others how they voted. - With one technology used to secure the entire election on which hinges trillions of dollars and control of the most powerful military in the world how do you know that a singular exploit wouldn't allow you to forge the election. - Given that the functioning or non functioning would rely on crypto instead of things people understand like counting marks on paper how would you ever expect regular people to trust it?

tcgv 6y ago
For one, a blockchain based voting system would allow individual voters to ensure that their votes haven't been tampered with, without breaking anonymity. If one or more voters fail to check their vote registered in the blockchain, they could submit a complain providing their voting key and voting receipt (this receipt could be any proof of vote, like a public verifiable signature provided by the blockchain at the time of voting)
- rjmunro 6y ago
  The main reason you can't force people to vote for you is that once they get in the polling booth, no one knows how they specifically voted. If you allow people to "check their vote" later, an attacker could verify that they voted in the way the attacker wanted.
  - tcgv 6y ago
    You're right, this approach would require a strong protection against deanonymization of votes, which could allow attackers to guess who voted for each candidate, for instance according to voting time and location.
    - GauntletWizard 6y ago
      Attackers don’t need to guess. They can equally strongarm the information. Under any “blockchain” based voting system, what is preventing your boss from saying “Sit down in this chair and log into the system and let me see who you voted for”? The answer is: Nothing prevents that. So long as you allow checking who you voted for afterwards, you allow the participants to verifiably disclose their votes. This is precisely what secret votes are guarding against: This prevents vote-harvesting schemes where a corporation forces its workers (or otherwise buys) verified votes. They can pay you to vote X, but they cannot verify that transaction: You can take their money and vote Y.
      - tcgv 6y ago
        Great point, didn't think about that. A verification without disclosure mechanism would be required then, not sure if that is feasible though.