4 ms·

Math is more trustworthy than the state. One of the few things both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is the state of the Bitcoin ledger. Political repres

Math is more trustworthy than the state. One of the few things both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is the state of the Bitcoin ledger. Political representation becomes obsolete with blockchains that can facilitate a referendum on every issue without the need for centralised trust.

midev 5y ago
Math is not magical and the blockchain doesn't solve any of these problems. Let's look at the risks and see how the blockchain does nothing: 1. Vote machines change votes - Great, the blockchain would allow people to verify their vote! Well, the software that sums up all blockchain votes could still miscount them, regardless of what the blockchain contains. Ok! So we can audit the results! Great, we can already do that with paper ballots. 2. Dead people voting - Again, same as the audit before. We see a John Smith voted on the blockchain. We can look up John Smith based on a paper ballot, just as we can with the blockchain. 3. Illegals voting - The same process used for identifying voters and giving out private keys can be used for verifying voters But what about risks you have introduced? 1. By making everything electronic, you've shifted the risk from local elections, to state actors. Signing keys are not magic. If a country found a solution to the factorization problem, or solving discrete logarithms, the scheme would collapse and they could forge massive amounts of votes. 2. Getting 300m people to manage cryptographic keys is impossible. Keys will be stolen, just as bitcoin wallets are. Now you need to deal with revocation of votes, and other controls that nobody has yet invented. tldr: blockchains are dumb
midev 5y ago
Second reply > Political representation becomes obsolete with blockchains that can facilitate a referendum on every issue without the need for centralised trust The choice of representative democracy was not because of the difficulty of counting votes. The founding fathers very clearly rejected what you're proposing. It's because most people are grossly ignorant about most things, and their opinion shouldn't be counted. If you can't pass a high school math class, I honestly don't care about your opinion on climate change. The blockchain solves none of that.

midev 5y ago

Math is not magical and the blockchain doesn't solve any of these problems. Let's look at the risks and see how the blockchain does nothing: 1. Vote machines change votes - Great, the blockchain would allow people to verify their vote! Well, the software that sums up all blockchain votes could still miscount them, regardless of what the blockchain contains. Ok! So we can audit the results! Great, we can already do that with paper ballots. 2. Dead people voting - Again, same as the audit before. We see a John Smith voted on the blockchain. We can look up John Smith based on a paper ballot, just as we can with the blockchain. 3. Illegals voting - The same process used for identifying voters and giving out private keys can be used for verifying voters But what about risks you have introduced? 1. By making everything electronic, you've shifted the risk from local elections, to state actors. Signing keys are not magic. If a country found a solution to the factorization problem, or solving discrete logarithms, the scheme would collapse and they could forge massive amounts of votes. 2. Getting 300m people to manage cryptographic keys is impossible. Keys will be stolen, just as bitcoin wallets are. Now you need to deal with revocation of votes, and other controls that nobody has yet invented. tldr: blockchains are dumb

midev 5y ago

Second reply > Political representation becomes obsolete with blockchains that can facilitate a referendum on every issue without the need for centralised trust The choice of representative democracy was not because of the difficulty of counting votes. The founding fathers very clearly rejected what you're proposing. It's because most people are grossly ignorant about most things, and their opinion shouldn't be counted. If you can't pass a high school math class, I honestly don't care about your opinion on climate change. The blockchain solves none of that.