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USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

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Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#51

Post by barbegal »

sebmellen wrote: post #30
barbegal wrote: post #20

You could easily replace the word Blockchain in this patent application with the word database and it would all still make sense. Blockchains (I prefer to call them Merkle trees) were invented 40 years ago. The interesting part about cryptocurrency based Blockchains that makes them unforgeable is that they contain proof of work. The work to create an entire Blockchain is equal to the sum of the work contained in each…

I strongly disagree. This is a comment from someone who (I presume) is unaware of the advances in Proof-of-Stake blockchains, and other consensus protocols like the Stellar Consensus Protocol. Databases do not have a distributed way to manage consensus - one of the main things that sets a blockchain apart from a distributed database. This consensus mechanism is what's important when something important (like an elect…

Stellar operates on the basis of trust in a third party [1].

The jury is still out on proof of stake blockchains like Casper [2]

[1] https://stellar.stackexchange.com/questions/160/how-does-the...

[2]https://medium.com/@muneeb/peer-review-cbc-casper-30840a98c8...

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#52

Post by sebmellen »

aoowii wrote: post #48

Am I the only one still against network-based, and to a lesser extent electronic-based, voting? It's near impossible to rig or suppress a physical election without a lot of effort, but one person can DDoS an entire network and no one can vote and the whole election needs to be scrapped. Not even the strongest cryptographic or software systems are free from exploits (especially over time) and there's no way to be sure…

You can read a some of my comments in this thread addressing various concerns. That said, I would still agree. At least for the next 5-10 years (until we have Starlink-level internet and advances in cryptography/UX), electronic voting systems are not feasible.

The nice thing about blockchains is you can avoid DDoS by only allowing people who are "authorized" to "talk to" the blockchain. This can be done by ensuring that "Right to Vote" tokens are only sent to those who would otherwise be participating in the election, and ensuring they can only submit one vote, and one transaction, by sending that token to a specific burn account. This way, with 300 million voters, you would have a cap of 300 million votes. No one else could "submit" a vote, because they wouldn't have permission to on the blockchain network.

This is how blockchains avoid DDoS attacks already, but open and public blockchains have the problem that anyone can buy their native currencies, and with enough money can spam the network. With a "permissioned" system for elections, this risk would be mitigated.

EDIT: I would appreciate if the downvoters engaged with me or explained their reason for downvoting.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#53

Post by donaltroddyn »

sebmellen wrote: post #36
Yetanfou wrote: post #33

Did they also invent a system which protects against voter coercion? If they did not, they might as well stop now since no matter how secure the voting system is its relevance falls down to zero if it is possible for the local gang leader to coerce voters to vote for 'his' candidate - "my man stands behind you to watch you vote for candidate X, if you so much as twitch your little girl gets whipped" (which works but…

This is a ridiculous argument, because it could just as well apply to mail-in voting as blockchain-based voting. I also think this fear is far overstated (do we have any stories of this happening in the US?) and the more pernicious forms of voter suppression and misinformation are downplayed. If blockchain systems allow 90% of the populace to vote unencumbered, with a 5% inaccuracy rate (which is far higher than to b…

It's certainly not a ridiculous argument. Anonymity is a cornerstone of fair voting systems, and any system that allows votes to be deanonymised increases the risk of coercion.

The same type of risk applies to postal voting, although with less severity, as with postal voting there is only one opportunity to check the coerced vote. Blockchain based votes can be checked after the fact.

Still, for this reason, postal voting is rare, and most countries that allow it do so only for citizens living abroad or who cannot travel to a polling station die to injury or illness.

Countries like the UK and Australia that allow any eligible voter to do so by mail are rare.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#55

Post by foepys »

sebmellen wrote: post #23
foepys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the average citizen verify what is actually happening and that their vote is actually being counted? That when they vote for X that the counter for X is increasing by 1? By verify I mean full understanding of the process without the need to believe somebody who calls themselves an "expert".

This is a tricky UX issue at the moment, but I'm sure this will be doable in time. The nice thing about blockchains is that once transactions are finalized, the state is known, independently of whether or not the user was hacked. With zero-knowledge proofs, voters could theoretically verify that their "right to vote token" (as I've explained in another answer above) was used to cast a certain vote, without revealing…

It's not a UX issue, it's a logic issue. Voting has to count each vote exactly once, must be easily (!) verifiable at every step, and must be anonymous. Every blockchain systems violates at least one of those constrains, mostly the verifiable part.

Estonia is more or less unimportant on the global scale. There is very little incentive to manipulate an election from the outside.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#56

Post by pgt »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #49
pgt wrote: post #27

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but what if for each election we issued a ballot containing a unique, random, sequential prime number to every registered voter? Then, when counting the votes for each candidate we display the running product of all the primes counted for that candidate as a "checksum", or "check product". This retains privacy while allowing individual voters to easily verify that their vote was counted by…

This setup seems mostly pointless to me. Instead of publishing the product, why not just list the primes themselves? Both should be roughly equivalent and just publishing the list of primes would be simpler. And then once you do that, why even use prime numbers? Just assign unique tokens to voters. What exact security garantee are you trying to provide that wouldn't also be satisfied by just giving each voter a token…

It can be verified with a pencil and piece of paper and a calculator, so anybody can do it. As long as you agree about the number of sequential primes issued, you can calculate how many votes are still outstanding and keep voting booths open until 99% has voted. By issuing ranges of primes to states, you know where you have to keep booths open.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#57

Post by diffeomorphism »

Ekaros wrote: post #54

What is wrong with in-person paper-ballots? They have worked for centuries. And continue to be the absolute best system from multiple criteria.

Covid? Waiting in long lines? Not having votes on a holiday like in civilized countries?

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#58

Post by sebmellen »

hwillis wrote: post #45
sebmellen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. This is a comment from someone who (I presume) is unaware of the advances in Proof-of-Stake blockchains, and other consensus protocols like the Stellar Consensus Protocol. Databases do not have a distributed way to manage consensus - one of the main things that sets a blockchain apart from a distributed database. This consensus mechanism is what's important when something important (like an elect…

??? You absolutely do not want consensus anywhere near an election. Consensus is not about agreeing on the total balance of transactions, it's about agreeing on individual transactions. It implies that multiple people know what your vote was which is absolutely not what you want.

This is not true if the voting apparatus is separate from the identity of the voter. There are two ways to accomplish this, and the USPS is proposing that they ship voters a sort of "private key", which is fully anonymous, which has no connection to their identity. This key is used once, with the right to cast one vote.

In such a system, the whole blockchain will know what each public key voted for. The difference is that there is no connection between this public key and the vote of an individual. This would allow for a massively snd openly auditable system, without sacrificing privacy or convenience.

I am not a proponent of this, as I think that in the near and mid-term futures, there are too many technical problems to be worked out. If, however, we end up giving every citizen digital ID cards as Estonia has done, and using those as secure hardware used for voting, we could distribute the voting process. Essentially, there would be no more vote-counting. There would only be vote casting and the election results would be apparent to everyone, immediately.

Consensus is absolutely necessary for such a system.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#59

Post by sebmellen »

Scarblac wrote: post #40
DarthGhandi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you prove the database hasn't been tampered with?

Make it public and put it in version control, every time a vote is counted you publicise a new revision, everybody with an interest can download regularly and check for tampering?

This is a more complicated and less scalable way of creating a blockchain.

Re: USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

#60

Post by jsilence »

pgt wrote: post #27

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but what if for each election we issued a ballot containing a unique, random, sequential prime number to every registered voter? Then, when counting the votes for each candidate we display the running product of all the primes counted for that candidate as a "checksum", or "check product". This retains privacy while allowing individual voters to easily verify that their vote was counted by…

Why not simply print a receipt after voting with the vote printed verbatim and a digital token that allows the voter to easily check whether the vote has actually been counted correctly.

The token could be a hash of some relevant parameters that are easy to check and maybe digitally signed by the voting machine or whatever.

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