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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

#171

Post by diebeforei485 »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #159
diebeforei485 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a generational thing. Younger software engineers who grew up doing everything on their phones see this as something worth solving, because it would vastly improve access, end voter suppression, and people wouldn't have to take time off work to vote anymore. Universal mail-in ballots do address many of those points, but also have downsides (signature verification is tricky). Older engineers on the other hand don'…

I don't think that's fair. I'm young enough? And thing that given our current electoral systems and shoddy educations , paper voting is definitely better. If everyone knowingly did some basic applied asymmetric key cryptography every day, and it was thought in grade school, that could change things. If we voted far more often, so that the benefit of a single compromised vote was far less, that could change things. I…

Meanwhile people have difficulty filling out paper ballots, because it's terrible UX. If you want to have a nice voting system like STV or even ranked-choice, shading ovals on paper ballots is not ideal.

Sometimes it feels as though existing problems get a free pass because of tradition, but new issues (even if addressed) are scary and so the entire thing should be stopped.

I think the right strategy is to pick a state, implement a voting system there for people to vote on their phones, and then see if it works out or not. Had this been done a couple of years ago, we would have been more prepared for covid-19 this election. And we're only going to have more pandemics and other disasters going forward.

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

#172

Post by the_snooze »

enaaem wrote: post #96
atoav wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Taiwan has the best way of counting votes. Ballot is hold in the air, the name is called out and someone in the back keeps the score. Everyone can see what is going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw

There are practical limitations that prevent us from doing that in the US. Specifically, our ballots tend to be long and complicated. A California ballot on a presidential year can have dozens of contests, from president to dog catcher to referenda. Reading out all ballots would be very time-consuming and likely very error-prone as poll workers are pretty tired by the end of the night.

This is why we have scanners to speed up counting paper ballots. And paper ballots are retained for targeted manual counts if there's a need for auditing or recounts.

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

#173

Post by klyrs »

gspr wrote: post #105
pgt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issue 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17... up to N for N registered voters. Mix them up and hand out randomly. So let's say you get 5 and I get 7. To vote, you cast your prime for a candidate, thereby consuming it. No two candidates can share a prime, because their checksums will have a common factor, which is not allowed. If we both vote for candidate A, his checkproduct is now 35. If ballots 11, 13 and 17 vote for candidate B…

In this system you have to trust that the issuing authority never reuses primes. That seeems like a major downside, and something that is hard to overcome with transparency.

People would definitely notice if the checkproduct for two candidates had a nontrivial gcd. Which is almost guaranteed to happen if primes are recycled to a significant degree.

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

#174

Post by macNchz »

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…

This is still vulnerable to a DoS attack as the parent suggested. Not terribly difficult for an individual to tie up all the phone lines or overload the web voting portal.

I also agree with the parent comment re hubris about this stuff: the incentives are immensely high for someone to compromise a system like this, and it only takes a small oversight to cause a huge disaster. Everyone gets a random password? Better hope whoever is generating them used a good RNG and a proper source of entropy...

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

#175

Post by egypturnash »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #142
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…

The average Joe doesn't want the nerds to pick the president. Also, don't forget it's a secret ballot, and we do not have any good database of people with public keys in this country. What the hell am I supposed to make of a ledger with 100s of million anonymous public keys? Surely I cannot claim that relates 1-1 with the choices of real people.

This is America. Your social security number will make a perfectly fine secret key! It works so well as a secret for everything else in your life, after all. I'm sure nobody else has has it, or can acquire it for use in mass voter fraud!

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

#176

Post by ses1984 »

beaner wrote: post #170
BurningFrog wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you stop reading right at the end of the part you quoted?

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

#177

Post by ben509 »

todaysAI wrote: post #42

Maybe they should maintain the postal boxes, have enough sorting machines, maintain the necessary manpower/processes, and remain independent enough to deliver the fucking mail.

Even if they did all that, all the states would need reliable mailing lists. Oregon and Washington have been rigorously checking their lists precisely because of this problem, while other states don't need to do that if the onus is on the voter to show up at the correct poll.

It turns out that 17% of Nevada primary ballots had the wrong address.

If over 10% of votes are mailed to the wrong address, it would be a major crisis in a hotly contested election.

[1]: https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/NV-2020-Primary-1P-1.p...

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

#178

Post by davisr »

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…

I'd never want electronic voting either, but this myth needs to die. Intimidation can happen with absentee voting too, so it's not a valid concern.

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

#179

Post by TheHypnotist »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #124
diffeomorphism wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

All of those are solvable (and solved in most western countries). Re. Covid, it would be a simple solution to spread in person voting out a few days. It would be an inconvenience but no need to invent a new system.

You overestimate the current government of the USA.

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

#180

Post by dashundchen »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #115
pgt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> t can be verified with a pencil and piece of paper and a calculator, so anybody can do it. The size of the resulting number would be so incredibly large that no person with pencil and paper and calculator would have even the tiniest chance of being able to verify their number. The chance of even copying it down correctly once would be tiny. The number of pages to write it out is huge. The time for a person to check…

Since most voting is handled and tallied by county/sub-divisions of that county, and are published as such, wouldn't the number be much smaller? A few thousand per district since you only need to be unique to the place your vote is tallied.
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