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Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

docs.voteism.org

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Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#11

What prevents normal users or malicious actors from voting multiple times? If no such prevention is in place, are there any guarantees at all that the collected statistics actually reflect real opinions?

When we process the results on the air-gapped system our algorithm does make sure that the user's vote is counted only once (no matter how many times the user has voted). Please read the process at https://voteism.org

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#12
post #6

Won't the results of this just be heavily biased via sampling by the fact that only certain types of people want to download and vote using an open-source public/private key voting simulation app?

Well, I think it's unfortunate that all opinion polls work that way. A small sample size can skew results in one direction. The objective is to get to a sample size as large as possible. I hope this goes in that direction.

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#14
post #12
post #6

Won't the results of this just be heavily biased via sampling by the fact that only certain types of people want to download and vote using an open-source public/private key voting simulation app?

Well, I think it's unfortunate that all opinion polls work that way. A small sample size can skew results in one direction. The objective is to get to a sample size as large as possible. I hope this goes in that direction.

No, most opinion polls don't work that way. Typically polls a) try and sample at random rather than self-selection and b) ask demographic questions that allows sampling to be adjusted to ensure it is representative.

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#15
post #12
post #6

Won't the results of this just be heavily biased via sampling by the fact that only certain types of people want to download and vote using an open-source public/private key voting simulation app?

Well, I think it's unfortunate that all opinion polls work that way. A small sample size can skew results in one direction. The objective is to get to a sample size as large as possible. I hope this goes in that direction.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think it's unfortunate that all opinion polls work that way. A small sample size can skew results in one direction. The objective is to get to a sample size as large as possible. I hope this goes in that direction.

No, most opinion polls don't work that way. Typically polls a) try and sample at random rather than self-selection and b) ask demographic questions that allows sampling to be adjusted to ensure it is representative.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#17
post #11

What prevents normal users or malicious actors from voting multiple times? If no such prevention is in place, are there any guarantees at all that the collected statistics actually reflect real opinions?

When we process the results on the air-gapped system our algorithm does make sure that the user's vote is counted only once (no matter how many times the user has voted). Please read the process at https://voteism.org

I've read both https://docs.voteism.org/ and the Github README, and found no mention of this algorithm that prevents multiple votes from malicious actors. Except a brief mention of collecting "device id, location, ip address, etc". Could you point me to the specific section where it is explained?

Edit: After rereading your comment, I felt there might have been a miscommunication. I'm sure your server discards multiple votes from the same registered user. With "voting multiple times" I instead refer to a malicious actor masquerading as multiple distinct users by registering multiple accounts.

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#18
post #11

What prevents normal users or malicious actors from voting multiple times? If no such prevention is in place, are there any guarantees at all that the collected statistics actually reflect real opinions?

When we process the results on the air-gapped system our algorithm does make sure that the user's vote is counted only once (no matter how many times the user has voted). Please read the process at https://voteism.org

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#19
post #8

This reminds me of Democracy Earth. I like how Democracy Earth takes into account the concept of liquid democracy, where people can vote through nominating a trusted person they feel is more suited than they are to make what they feel is the right decision. This representative vote is an option to take on a vote-by-vote basis. https://democracy.earth/

> where people can vote through nominating a trusted person they feel is more suited than they are to make what they feel is the right decision

So... a republic?

Re: Show HN: VOTEism – Secure political opinion poll app

#20
> We wondered what it would be like to conduct democratic elections online. While that is the far-far future, we set about building something that could get us a step closer towards that future.

There is unanimous agreement from the security community that we must not use digital voting. It is a mistake, full stop. As an opinion app it doesn't matter, but we must use paper ballots for our elections.

For anyone interested in learning more I recommend this short 20m Enigma conference talk by Ben Adida (currently building open source voting software/hardware at https://voting.works):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy0_8A9U8Rs

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