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Of all the complaints about blockchain voting this seems to me like one of the least valid ones. People don't have the slightest clue how traditional vote count

Of all the complaints about blockchain voting this seems to me like one of the least valid ones. People don't have the slightest clue how traditional vote counting and recount procedures work until sometimes goes wrong and it makes the news, and at that point it's literally impossible for the average citizen to do any form of auditing whatsoever.

heavyset_go 5y ago
> People don't have the slightest clue how traditional vote counting and recount procedures work until sometimes goes wrong and it makes the news And yet we can pull almost anyone off the street from both sides of the political aisle to participate in a non-partisan recount or audit and have it work out, which is what happens. We can't do that with blockchains.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Sure, but it's still a tiny portion of people who can be chosen to count the votes, and each one can only verify that they themselves have counted accurately.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I think there's value in the fact that voting is transparent enough that anyone can verify elections. There's also value in "John Doe from church and my cousin helped with the recount" versus "Three top 'experts' say it's fine, but I heard two of them work for Facebook!" or "We just have to trust what Palantir's consultants say."
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > Sure, but it's still a tiny portion of people who can be chosen to count the votes The counting process is open to any interested party, and more importantly the ballots are made available to any group interested in auditing them. > and each one can only verify that they themselves have counted accurately. What part do you believe might be missing?
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      What do you mean? I’m pretty sure a random citizen cannot just ask for millions of ballots and count all of them. When you help counting, you’re only counting a tiny portion of the ballots.
jltsiren 5y ago
That may be true in the US today, but other countries have voting systems that are easier to understand and more transparent. Let's take a reasonable threat model. The society is heavily fractured. Not in an inconsequential way as in the US today, but more like Europe between the world wars. Communism and fascism were mainstream, and there was a credible threat of a civil war. (Not to mention a fair number of actual civil wars.) Consider an average voter who does not trust the election authorities or the companies providing hardware and software for the elections. Maybe they are a communist who assumes that every major tech company is on the other side and actively trying to tamper with the elections. If the elections are actually run in a (mostly) fair manner, will that person trust the results? That happened many times in the early 20th century Europe. People who had no reason to trust the elections still believed in the legitimacy of the results, which probably prevented civil wars.
acdha 5y ago
> People don't have the slightest clue how traditional vote counting and recount procedures work until sometimes goes wrong and it makes the news Is that really the case? It seems far more common that the problem isn’t that people don’t understand how it works but is rather that they don’t like the result and pick that as an excuse. When evaluating a proposed new system, we have to think about it outside of contexts where everyone is acting in good faith — the current system survived hundreds of challenges because it’s simple, robust, and anyone can understand how it works and that cheating would require moving millions of pieces of paper in locations around the country, which is very hard to conceal. Try to think about how a complex digital system would offer new avenues for complaint to the same well-funded attackers whose claims are not constrained by facts or reason. As we’ve already seen, even if the new part was perfectly implemented all they’d do is shift to where it interfaces with the real world (“I hit A and it changed it to B!”, “These people weren’t eligible to vote and I just know they voted for the other guy”, etc.). Since it wouldn’t be perfect, it would just afford new angles for misrepresenting things to a willing audience – as we saw with those fake “pcaps” or claims that China was connecting to the voting machine servers.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> People don't have the slightest clue how traditional vote counting and recount procedures work until sometimes goes wrong and it makes the news And yet we can pull almost anyone off the street from both sides of the political aisle to participate in a non-partisan recount or audit and have it work out, which is what happens. We can't do that with blockchains.

tshaddox 5y ago
Sure, but it's still a tiny portion of people who can be chosen to count the votes, and each one can only verify that they themselves have counted accurately.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  I think there's value in the fact that voting is transparent enough that anyone can verify elections. There's also value in "John Doe from church and my cousin helped with the recount" versus "Three top 'experts' say it's fine, but I heard two of them work for Facebook!" or "We just have to trust what Palantir's consultants say."
- nuerow 5y ago
  > Sure, but it's still a tiny portion of people who can be chosen to count the votes The counting process is open to any interested party, and more importantly the ballots are made available to any group interested in auditing them. > and each one can only verify that they themselves have counted accurately. What part do you believe might be missing?
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    What do you mean? I’m pretty sure a random citizen cannot just ask for millions of ballots and count all of them. When you help counting, you’re only counting a tiny portion of the ballots.

jltsiren 5y ago

That may be true in the US today, but other countries have voting systems that are easier to understand and more transparent. Let's take a reasonable threat model. The society is heavily fractured. Not in an inconsequential way as in the US today, but more like Europe between the world wars. Communism and fascism were mainstream, and there was a credible threat of a civil war. (Not to mention a fair number of actual civil wars.) Consider an average voter who does not trust the election authorities or the companies providing hardware and software for the elections. Maybe they are a communist who assumes that every major tech company is on the other side and actively trying to tamper with the elections. If the elections are actually run in a (mostly) fair manner, will that person trust the results? That happened many times in the early 20th century Europe. People who had no reason to trust the elections still believed in the legitimacy of the results, which probably prevented civil wars.

acdha 5y ago

> People don't have the slightest clue how traditional vote counting and recount procedures work until sometimes goes wrong and it makes the news Is that really the case? It seems far more common that the problem isn’t that people don’t understand how it works but is rather that they don’t like the result and pick that as an excuse. When evaluating a proposed new system, we have to think about it outside of contexts where everyone is acting in good faith — the current system survived hundreds of challenges because it’s simple, robust, and anyone can understand how it works and that cheating would require moving millions of pieces of paper in locations around the country, which is very hard to conceal. Try to think about how a complex digital system would offer new avenues for complaint to the same well-funded attackers whose claims are not constrained by facts or reason. As we’ve already seen, even if the new part was perfectly implemented all they’d do is shift to where it interfaces with the real world (“I hit A and it changed it to B!”, “These people weren’t eligible to vote and I just know they voted for the other guy”, etc.). Since it wouldn’t be perfect, it would just afford new angles for misrepresenting things to a willing audience – as we saw with those fake “pcaps” or claims that China was connecting to the voting machine servers.