12 ms·

> Really? Think about what we saw when the Republicans tried to claim the 2020 election was rigged and ask how a massively complex distributed system would chan

by darawk 5y ago

> Really? Think about what we saw when the Republicans tried to claim the 2020 election was rigged and ask how a massively complex distributed system would change that. A massively complex system that can be validated from a single point. That is the key component. > When someone argues that fake or dead people voted, the blockchain doesn’t help – you can show transactions but that doesn’t and cannot show that they were made by people who were eligible voters, and privacy makes it important that this never change. This is the same reason why blockchain systems like supply chain management fail: if you trust a third-party, you don’t need a blockchain. If you don’t, layering overhead on top won’t change that. Sure, the fact that it does not solve every problem does not mean it isn't a viable improvement. It solves a large class of trust problems in elections, and is orthogonal to the remaining ones. > The underlying problem is that a blockchain system still depends on trusted third parties. You need to verify that someone is eligible to vote and that their vote was accurately recorded. Think about all of the claims over the years about machines recording votes for a different candidate than the user selected, moving buttons right before someone clicked, etc. – there’s no way to solve that by adding more software. Did a bunch of people get bused in to vote for someone else? A blockchain cannot solve that – you need a trusted third party, and calling them an oracle doesn’t mean that’s not what they are. This is not necessarily the case. Cryptographic tokens can be issued to eligible voters. Yes, you still need to trust that the issuing authority is legitimate. But that is much easier to validate. Anyone who feels they are eligible but didn't receive one can say so. Anyone who did receive one can validate that their vote was counted. > What does work is the current system: the fact that bipartisan witnesses watched people being checked against voter rolls, paper being counted, and recounted, etc. meant that most people accepted the results. It’s not perfect but it works well and the fact that it’s distributed means that flaws or cheating don’t scale the way a digital system would. Right, but that relies on people in Texas trusting people in California - an inherently unstable system. Allowing the entire thing to be validated from the center is a massive improvement.

acdha 5y ago
> A massively complex system that can be validated from a single point. That is the key component. … > Sure, the fact that it does not solve every problem does not mean it isn't a viable improvement. It solves a large class of trust problems in elections, and is orthogonal to the remaining ones. Can you explain which problems you believe this solves, in detail? It's categorically untrue to say that it can be validated from a single point and I think that's the key gap in these solutions: voting involves people and that happens outside of what a software system can see. You can deploy a VC's dream of ineffective technologies and you'd have made no progress on the core question of whether the votes you tallied were cast by legitimate voters and recorded as they intended. > This is not necessarily the case. Cryptographic tokens can be issued to eligible voters. Yes, you still need to trust that the issuing authority is legitimate. But that is much easier to validate. Anyone who feels they are eligible but didn't receive one can say so. Anyone who did receive one can validate that their vote was counted. This adds new problems: if this uniquely identifies the person and their vote, your boss, union, pastor, etc. can demand that you show them you voted the way they wanted to. If it doesn't, you have the problem that it's very hard to disprove claims that a vote wasn't recorded correctly by the system or that someone ineligible was allowed to vote. Doing it cryptographically means that your system is now far more brittle and people have to trust a complex software stack which statistically nobody can audit as opposed to simple, robust paper ballots which can be understood by grade school children. > Right, but that relies on people in Texas trusting people in California - an inherently unstable system. Allowing the entire thing to be validated from the center is a massive improvement. How does a blockchain change this? Texans are still going to claim that people in California shouldn't have been allowed to vote for the other party — they'll change the lies they're telling from saying that people are sneaking in bags of ballots to, say, claiming that the voting machines changed votes after recording them, people who weren't supposed to be eligible were allowed to vote, etc. A blockchain won't solve any of the complaints we saw about, for example, dead people voting — that takes local authorities on the ground, all over.
- darawk 5y ago
  > Can you explain which problems you believe this solves, in detail? It's categorically untrue to say that it can be validated from a single point and I think that's the key gap in these solutions: voting involves people and that happens outside of what a software system can see. You can deploy a VC's dream of ineffective technologies and you'd have made no progress on the core question of whether the votes you tallied were cast by legitimate voters and recorded as they intended. I mean a system in which each eligible citizen receives a cryptographic token. They use that cryptographic token to vote. At the end of the tallying process, the government publishes a cryptographic object, that allows every individual to compare their token to it and validate that the vote of their token was counted, and counted correctly. This can be accomplished without facilitating vote buying by displaying a message to the voter at the time they input their vote, inside the voting booth. Without that message, you can validate that your vote was counted, but not who it was counted for. With that message, again visible only in the booth, you may validate who it was counted towards. This does not mitigate the problem of validating eligibility. It does mitigate the problem of accurate counting of votes cast. > This adds new problems: if this uniquely identifies the person and their vote, your boss, union, pastor, etc. can demand that you show them you voted the way they wanted to. If it doesn't, you have the problem that it's very hard to disprove claims that a vote wasn't recorded correctly by the system or that someone ineligible was allowed to vote. Doing it cryptographically means that your system is now far more brittle and people have to trust a complex software stack which statistically nobody can audit as opposed to simple, robust paper ballots which can be understood by grade school children. Right, you need a blinding solution such that the information required to prove direction of vote is visible only in a secret, ephemeral context (e.g. voting booth). There are complete proposals with this feature, I believe. > How does a blockchain change this? Texans are still going to claim that people in California shouldn't have been allowed to vote for the other party — they'll change the lies they're telling from saying that people are sneaking in bags of ballots to, say, claiming that the voting machines changed votes after recording them, people who weren't supposed to be eligible were allowed to vote, etc. A blockchain won't solve any of the complaints we saw about, for example, dead people voting — that takes local authorities on the ground, all over. The blockchain piece isn't particularly important. I think merkle-tree like cryptographic objects can be useful in validating systems like this efficiently, but they are not necessarily an essential feature. You're right that Texans may still claim that ineligible Californians voted. A cryptographic system does not address the problem of validating eligibility, that is outside its scope. It addresses the problem of accurate, verifiable tallying. So that there are no viable stories of ballots being thrown out or otherwise miscounted.
henrikschroder 5y ago
> A massively complex system that can be validated from a single point. ...by nerds. Which is the entire problem of any kind of digital voting. It's not enough that some people can validate it, everyone has to be able to do it. It's not ok that you need to understand computer science to be able to do it.

by darawk 5y ago

acdha 5y ago

> A massively complex system that can be validated from a single point. That is the key component. … > Sure, the fact that it does not solve every problem does not mean it isn't a viable improvement. It solves a large class of trust problems in elections, and is orthogonal to the remaining ones. Can you explain which problems you believe this solves, in detail? It's categorically untrue to say that it can be validated from a single point and I think that's the key gap in these solutions: voting involves people and that happens outside of what a software system can see. You can deploy a VC's dream of ineffective technologies and you'd have made no progress on the core question of whether the votes you tallied were cast by legitimate voters and recorded as they intended. > This is not necessarily the case. Cryptographic tokens can be issued to eligible voters. Yes, you still need to trust that the issuing authority is legitimate. But that is much easier to validate. Anyone who feels they are eligible but didn't receive one can say so. Anyone who did receive one can validate that their vote was counted. This adds new problems: if this uniquely identifies the person and their vote, your boss, union, pastor, etc. can demand that you show them you voted the way they wanted to. If it doesn't, you have the problem that it's very hard to disprove claims that a vote wasn't recorded correctly by the system or that someone ineligible was allowed to vote. Doing it cryptographically means that your system is now far more brittle and people have to trust a complex software stack which statistically nobody can audit as opposed to simple, robust paper ballots which can be understood by grade school children. > Right, but that relies on people in Texas trusting people in California - an inherently unstable system. Allowing the entire thing to be validated from the center is a massive improvement. How does a blockchain change this? Texans are still going to claim that people in California shouldn't have been allowed to vote for the other party — they'll change the lies they're telling from saying that people are sneaking in bags of ballots to, say, claiming that the voting machines changed votes after recording them, people who weren't supposed to be eligible were allowed to vote, etc. A blockchain won't solve any of the complaints we saw about, for example, dead people voting — that takes local authorities on the ground, all over.

darawk 5y ago
> Can you explain which problems you believe this solves, in detail? It's categorically untrue to say that it can be validated from a single point and I think that's the key gap in these solutions: voting involves people and that happens outside of what a software system can see. You can deploy a VC's dream of ineffective technologies and you'd have made no progress on the core question of whether the votes you tallied were cast by legitimate voters and recorded as they intended. I mean a system in which each eligible citizen receives a cryptographic token. They use that cryptographic token to vote. At the end of the tallying process, the government publishes a cryptographic object, that allows every individual to compare their token to it and validate that the vote of their token was counted, and counted correctly. This can be accomplished without facilitating vote buying by displaying a message to the voter at the time they input their vote, inside the voting booth. Without that message, you can validate that your vote was counted, but not who it was counted for. With that message, again visible only in the booth, you may validate who it was counted towards. This does not mitigate the problem of validating eligibility. It does mitigate the problem of accurate counting of votes cast. > This adds new problems: if this uniquely identifies the person and their vote, your boss, union, pastor, etc. can demand that you show them you voted the way they wanted to. If it doesn't, you have the problem that it's very hard to disprove claims that a vote wasn't recorded correctly by the system or that someone ineligible was allowed to vote. Doing it cryptographically means that your system is now far more brittle and people have to trust a complex software stack which statistically nobody can audit as opposed to simple, robust paper ballots which can be understood by grade school children. Right, you need a blinding solution such that the information required to prove direction of vote is visible only in a secret, ephemeral context (e.g. voting booth). There are complete proposals with this feature, I believe. > How does a blockchain change this? Texans are still going to claim that people in California shouldn't have been allowed to vote for the other party — they'll change the lies they're telling from saying that people are sneaking in bags of ballots to, say, claiming that the voting machines changed votes after recording them, people who weren't supposed to be eligible were allowed to vote, etc. A blockchain won't solve any of the complaints we saw about, for example, dead people voting — that takes local authorities on the ground, all over. The blockchain piece isn't particularly important. I think merkle-tree like cryptographic objects can be useful in validating systems like this efficiently, but they are not necessarily an essential feature. You're right that Texans may still claim that ineligible Californians voted. A cryptographic system does not address the problem of validating eligibility, that is outside its scope. It addresses the problem of accurate, verifiable tallying. So that there are no viable stories of ballots being thrown out or otherwise miscounted.

henrikschroder 5y ago

> A massively complex system that can be validated from a single point. ...by nerds. Which is the entire problem of any kind of digital voting. It's not enough that some people can validate it, everyone has to be able to do it. It's not ok that you need to understand computer science to be able to do it.