2 ms·

You counting some tiny subset of the votes is not an audit. There is not a single person on earth who could audit an entire federal election on their own. Ther

You counting some tiny subset of the votes is not an audit. There is not a single person on earth who could audit an entire federal election on their own. There are multitude people because you need multitude people. I could audit an election in the blockchain tomorrow.

nuerow 5y ago
> You counting some tiny subset of the votes is not an audit. We, it actually is. Audits serve to verify the results from one or more constituencies. Unless you somehow believe that each and every constituency has bee tampered with, you focus your attention onto the "tiny subset" that you deemed questionable. > There is not a single person on earth who could audit an entire federal election on their own. There are multitude people because you need multitude people. I don't understand why you feel that's relevant. An election involves public participation, and the goal is to ensure the public that the process is fair and reliable. If enough people find that the results are not reliable in any way then they are able to verify it themselves. If however only half a dozen voters in a universe of a few hundred thousand voters disagree with the result, and the vast majority of the electorate doesn't agree with the half dozen sceptics, then where's the value in it? I mean, this whole hypothetical scenario relies on the assumption that a party/candidate that has a sizeable support is somehow not able or interested in verifying election results, but a single isolated individual is?
- fastball 5y ago
  > If enough people find that the results are not reliable in any way then they are able to verify it themselves The whole point is that they can't. They need to rely on other people to verify the results. They cannot "verify it themselves". > hypothetical scenario relies on The hypothetical scenario relies on wanting the benefits of digital voting (of which there are many) without the major downside (of which there is one). A publicly verifiable ledger gives you the benefits of digital without the major downside, which is that generally with anything digital you can commit fraud at scale.
acdha 5y ago
> I could audit an election in the blockchain tomorrow. No, you could confirm that a set of electronic records was internally consistent. That is only a small part of an election audit: you'd also need to confirm that only eligible voters voted a single time each and that their vote was recorded the way they intended. Needing a multitude of people is a security advantage of the current system: it means that any attempts at cheating need a ton of people, from both parties and the local government, to collude together because there's no way to automate changing thousands of paper ballots and the corresponding seals — the real world doesn't have an “UPDATE votes SET …” shortcut. Contrast that with a blockchain system: when it's challenged, you're in one of two situations. If all you have are electronic records, you've just reinvented the Diebold scandals of the 2000s where you're trying to assess how much you can believe that a complex software system does not contain a bug or exploitable flaw because there's no solid proof. If you use voter-validated paper ballots, you do a standard hand recount — and you don't need a blockchain at all because the thing providing security is the robust well-tested paper balloting system.

nuerow 5y ago

> You counting some tiny subset of the votes is not an audit. We, it actually is. Audits serve to verify the results from one or more constituencies. Unless you somehow believe that each and every constituency has bee tampered with, you focus your attention onto the "tiny subset" that you deemed questionable. > There is not a single person on earth who could audit an entire federal election on their own. There are multitude people because you need multitude people. I don't understand why you feel that's relevant. An election involves public participation, and the goal is to ensure the public that the process is fair and reliable. If enough people find that the results are not reliable in any way then they are able to verify it themselves. If however only half a dozen voters in a universe of a few hundred thousand voters disagree with the result, and the vast majority of the electorate doesn't agree with the half dozen sceptics, then where's the value in it? I mean, this whole hypothetical scenario relies on the assumption that a party/candidate that has a sizeable support is somehow not able or interested in verifying election results, but a single isolated individual is?

fastball 5y ago
> If enough people find that the results are not reliable in any way then they are able to verify it themselves The whole point is that they can't. They need to rely on other people to verify the results. They cannot "verify it themselves". > hypothetical scenario relies on The hypothetical scenario relies on wanting the benefits of digital voting (of which there are many) without the major downside (of which there is one). A publicly verifiable ledger gives you the benefits of digital without the major downside, which is that generally with anything digital you can commit fraud at scale.

acdha 5y ago

> I could audit an election in the blockchain tomorrow. No, you could confirm that a set of electronic records was internally consistent. That is only a small part of an election audit: you'd also need to confirm that only eligible voters voted a single time each and that their vote was recorded the way they intended. Needing a multitude of people is a security advantage of the current system: it means that any attempts at cheating need a ton of people, from both parties and the local government, to collude together because there's no way to automate changing thousands of paper ballots and the corresponding seals — the real world doesn't have an “UPDATE votes SET …” shortcut. Contrast that with a blockchain system: when it's challenged, you're in one of two situations. If all you have are electronic records, you've just reinvented the Diebold scandals of the 2000s where you're trying to assess how much you can believe that a complex software system does not contain a bug or exploitable flaw because there's no solid proof. If you use voter-validated paper ballots, you do a standard hand recount — and you don't need a blockchain at all because the thing providing security is the robust well-tested paper balloting system.