Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System

heraldsheets.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 390 posts

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

#81

Post by Ekaros »

sebmellen wrote: post #39
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…

Not necessarily a dumb idea, but blockchains provide us an easier way to do something similar. Every voter would be provided 1 (one) "Right to Vote" token after verifying their identity or receiving it by mail (as is the proposed solution from the USPS). This is arguably just as secure as mail-in voting. Each voter would also have an "on-chain voter ID", which would just be an anonymous public-private keypair in poss…

Receive by mail? At that point I already know that the system is fundamentally broken...

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

#82

Post by Slartie »

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…

No, you are in good company. There are those that believe technology would eventually be the solution for any problem, and those that have lived through this phase already and sobered up, eventually coming to the conclusion that technology is not some magic dust able to solve any problem you throw it on, but just a tool like other tools, each of which has its purposes. All of them, not just modern technology, are fascinating, but none of them is magic.

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

#83

Post by Ekaros »

compsciphd wrote: post #37
luckylion wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It allows for verification not only by the voter but also by third parties, doesn't it? That would make it possibly to sell votes (with proof!) or threaten people with repercussions unless they vote a certain way.

what's a bigger threat. "selling votes" or unverifiable election. i.e. we generally say election fraud is not a huge problem because its too easy to get caught. if that's the case, one would think any vote buying scheme would be even easier to get caught.

Or coercion. If at any point your vote can be known, there is very high risk that someone forces you to vote like they want. Only way to prevent this is total anonymity of which vote was by which person.

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

#85

Post by shrubble »

I never understood why voting remains such an issue.

Why not have the credit card companies handle voting? The cost of a card with the chip is less than $2 isn't it?

The card is swiped into a reader, the ballot is displayed on screen, choices are made and confirmed, a laser printer prints out a paper ballot which is dropped into a secure box.

We would know within 1 hour of polls closing the accurate tally of every race.

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

#86

Post by dpflan »

jsilence wrote: post #60
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.

Indeed, a record of proof of the transaction instills more confidence in the system (i.e. votes aren't just in this "black box") and provides a redundancy in the case of issues with the electronic system.

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

#87

Post by Ekaros »

donaltroddyn wrote: post #53
sebmellen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vo…

For example the system used for postal voting or more exactly early voting in Finland is one where there is time period(around week) when voters can vote in any early voting location around country, or in such places like embassies around the world.

The process is same as regular voting. Only difference is that vote is enclosed in envelope which is enclosed in second envelope and shipped to voting precinct to be opened later and counted with rest of the votes. During the voting process identity of voter is verified.

There is some risks here, but there really isn't much to fix that. In the end if you trust enough the step between voting and shipping votes it's very decent. Anonymity is there and also voter is verified.

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

#88

Post by chrismeller »

atoav wrote: post #72
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 are not the only one. However I don't think security is even a relevant concern, because there is one much more fundamental flaw in all electronic voting systems: The goal of voting is to produce agreeable consent — so it doesn't really matter how you organise voting, as long as everybody afterwards can agree who won, who lost and by how much. So phrased differently, one of the most important properties of any vo…

And don't forget that the US operates on the Electoral College, which a shocking number of people don't even understand. Since each state has different rules about their EC delegates, popular vote does not necessarily equal winner...

Now try telling that to people when there's a big screen with "official" numbers that were all provided electronically an hour after polls closed...

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

#89

Post by xorcist »

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…

> their digital ID cards, which use an underlying blockchain-type system

The arguments outlined above are really hard to follow, and doesn't really help the blockchain voting case.

Unless something exceptional happened recently, Estonian eID cards are just bog standard ISO 7810/7816 cards.

No blockchain or blockchain-like system involved. Just regular X.509 style PKI. They were even affected by the insecure proprietary RSAlib code a few years ago, like so many others, and all cards had to be replaced.

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

#90

Post by shireboy »

doublesCs wrote: post #77
plankers wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the only one. https://xkcd.com/2030/

> Our entire field is bad at what we do. Our entire field is bad at what we do, because it's full of coders instead of engineers. Think about it. Building airplanes reliably has been figured out by aircraft engineers, building elevators safely has been figured out by building engineers, and building software reliably has been figured out by software _engineers_ (the NASA kind, who landed a spacecraft on the moon). Ho…

You mean like the 125m Mars orbiter lost due to engineers forgetting imperial/metric conversion? https://www.simscale.com/blog/2017/12/nasa-mars-climate-orbi...
Post reply on HN