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

161–170 of 390 posts

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

#161

Post by koheripbal »

galkk wrote: post #17
colordrops wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You give one citizen one vote on the chain. They can personally verify that their vote was counted because the chain is visible. Counts can't be rigged because the entire chain is public. Voters can only vote by going to a physical location where they use a multi-key signature, one by the voter, and one by the local polling station, avoiding people selling off their keys. This is anonymous, traceable, and the vote ca…

As I see, the problem is not that the vote can be altered, but that the vote can be bought and the fact that person voted in the right fashion could be verified by 3-rd party much more easily (screenshots/whatever). The privacy of voting booth could give at least some chance to change mind/lie to the third party.

This is possible today anyway. People can take a picture of their ballot in the booth. Hell, with mail-in voting, you can literally go door-to-door and buy mail-in ballots.

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

#162

Post by diebeforei485 »

violetyellow wrote: post #120
shrubble wrote: post #85

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 ra…

Suppose I'm a bad guy with Trump, I command the credit card company to issue 1 million fake cards with names which are passed away in last century. Ask my agents to sweep these cards and vote for me. How could you civilians prevent these things from happening?

Vote by mail is also vulnerable to this.

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

#163

Post by koheripbal »

barbegal wrote: post #28
DarthGhandi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't but how can you prove the blockchain hasn't been tampered with?

If you are asking, then you don't understand how the blockchain works.

It's literally the entire point of the chain.

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

#164

Post by the_snooze »

koheripbal wrote: post #157
the_snooze wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have to trust the authorities who did that. Poll workers who do the count aren't "authorities" who lord over us. They are us. I volunteer to be a poll worker. You can too. Anyone who's an eligible voter can be part of the counting process and see how it's done. In my precinct, it's exactly what people see when they vote: they feed the machine their completed ballots and the machine spits out the count at the end o…

The number of people actually tabulating the results is still very very small - especially in key swing state districts. You cannot argue much with a public algorithm doing public tabulation, where you can literally follow your vote.

What do you consider "very very small?" Tabuation is done at the precinct level, and there are many many precincts involved in an election.

Also jurisdictions can do risk-limiting audits (RLA) to spot-check that the electronic counts are in line with the results. "Following your vote" is dangerous because it opens up the possibility of at-scale voter intimidation or vote-buying. "Receipt-freeness" is a desirable property because it eliminates this risk. RLAs allow for aggregate verification while maintaining receipt-freeness.

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

#166

Post by M2Ys4U »

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…

> Am I the only one still against network-based, and to a lesser extent electronic-based, voting?

No, you're not.

Electronic voting of any kind is a horrendously bad idea and it should be rejected at every possible opportunity because it cannot be secure.

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

#167

Post by M2Ys4U »

koheripbal wrote: post #157
the_snooze wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have to trust the authorities who did that. Poll workers who do the count aren't "authorities" who lord over us. They are us. I volunteer to be a poll worker. You can too. Anyone who's an eligible voter can be part of the counting process and see how it's done. In my precinct, it's exactly what people see when they vote: they feed the machine their completed ballots and the machine spits out the count at the end o…

The number of people actually tabulating the results is still very very small - especially in key swing state districts. You cannot argue much with a public algorithm doing public tabulation, where you can literally follow your vote.

>You cannot argue much with a public algorithm doing public tabulation, where you can literally follow your vote.

But that also means the guy with the big wrench can follow your vote and so see whether you voted the way he told you or not, and that allows him to decide whether to smash your kneecaps in.

Electronic voting enables corruption.

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

#169

Post by M2Ys4U »

miki123211 wrote: post #158
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…

There's a pretty easy way to solve this. Give everyone a random ID/password combination (in an unmarked envelope, so no one knows who got what). To vote, you connect to the system, either through a website or even an old, DTMF-based phone system for rular areas, and you cast your vote. After voting ends, a list of all IDs and their votes is published. If an ID didn't vote, it's marked appropriately. There should be l…

>The only drawback is the ability to prove who you voted for,

That's pretty much the biggest problem to have in any election...

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

#170

Post by beaner »

BurningFrog wrote: post #156
eloff wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a blockchain voting system help here, if everyone can examine the time, place, and votes in the history, and see that all the block hashes match what's expected? That gives much stronger guarantees than paper, and while the average Joe can't verify it himself, there would be three million programmers in the US alone who easily could. Whereas with paper I can't count the votes myself, I have to trust the auth…

One very important thing most people forget: If you can verify that your vote was correctly counted, your vote can't be kept secret, and intimidation and vote buying becomes impossible to stop. > Whereas with paper I can't count the votes myself, I have to trust the authorities who did that. The way it works in my home country is that the paper ballots are handled in an inspectable way and anyone can observe the coun…

> If you can verify that your vote was correctly counted, your vote can't be kept secret

This is false. Votes (transactions) in Bitcoin are pseudonymous, meaning everyone can see what votes were placed, but nobody knows who was responsible for the specific votes. Only the owner knows, unless they choose to reveal to others.

Post reply on HN