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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

#251

Post by elcritch »

snarf21 wrote: post #130
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…

Exactly. The other thing the current system does is that it involves LOTS of people. The people counting a specific polling place may only count 1000 votes. They know their count. They can talk to the other counters at other locations. So if your state or area all of a sudden miraculously goes blue/red, you can know it instantly and have the paper to prove it. This is the beauty of the system. It can't be hacked at s…

That’s a good point. Based on that idea, do you think large scale mail in ballots would have similar issues to an electronic system? Normally I don’t follow the news cycle, but this makes it seem large scale mail in ballots would be more readily corrupted at scale?

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

#252

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by throwaway936482 »

OliverGilan wrote: post #246

A lot of issues being brought up with electronic voting seem to me to be solvable via a blockchain technology like Ethereum. > Even if the code is open source you cannot know that's the software running on the polling machine. If the entire election happened on an Ethereum smart contract and every voter was given an address to vote with they could verify that their transaction cast a vote to the correct smart contrac…

Because it's utterly utterly unnecessary and can be solved by the very simple tick box, count ballot in public, let anyone watch or volunteer to do so system. The existing problems with the American system of dodgy ballots, hanging chads, OCR errors etc. are causes by too much technology. Get rid of it all and use a wholly manual system. Treat postal votes the same way and count them at the same time as other ballots.

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

#254

Post by wtracy »

mulmen wrote: post #100
Qwertious wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you vote from home, what sort of receipt do you get? A digital receipt for every candidate can't be recorded unless it's mailed in (and if people are all mailing in anyway then it sounds like you're just overcomplicating things), and people keeping a record of their vote at home where they can show others will let people systemically validate blackmail - "show me you voted or I'll break your kneecaps". Although to…

Blackmail doesn’t scale. In WA the ballot has a tab you peel off and can track through a webpage. It’s basically the system outlined above but we actually fill out a paper ballot then mail it in. The postage is prepaid. This solves basically all problems and works great. It’s independently verifiable. It’s anonymous. It’s accessible.

> Blackmail doesn’t scale.

If elections in my district are historically won by a 10-20% margin, and my corporation directly employs 20% of the people in the district, then I think I could make blackmail scale just fine.

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

#255

Post by pinkfoot »

pwg wrote: post #248
compsciphd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is coercion really a threat on a large scale in the US (I'm sure in other countries it is). But if the onl way to know my vote is to have my random identifier, if I dispose of my random identifier, they can't know my vote. i.e. I feel we can both have total anonymity if a person desires, while also having verifiability. as an example: a random uuid is assigned to me and my votes are printed out on a slip of paper wit…

> is coercion really a threat on a large scale in the US No, largely because of the secret vote and the fact that there is no way anyone can verify how "you" voted after the fact. So you can lie to the thug threatening you with a wrench that you voted for "candidate A" and the thug has no way to know otherwise. > But if the onl way to know my vote is to have my random identifier, if I dispose of my random identifier,…

>No, largely because of the secret vote and the fact that there is no way anyone can verify how "you" voted after the fact. So you can lie to the thug threatening you with a wrench that you voted for "candidate A" and the thug has no way to know otherwise.

Sadly, the thug also knows this. But what the thug (=ruling party) does know is whether an entire voting district votes for the opposition.

Then they come down hard on the entire district. In all sorts of creative ways.

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

#257

Post by pwg »

foepys wrote: post #13
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…

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".

> How does the average citizen verify what is actually happening and that their vote is actually being counted?

Volunteer to be a poll worker and to be one of the witnesses during the counting process. You can then watch every step of the process occur openly and see that the votes are being counted accurately.

If you watch the process accurately count all of the vote papers in the box at the end of the day, you can reasonably conclude that everyone's vote in that precinct was counted accurately.

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

#258

Post by throwaway936482 »

the_snooze wrote: post #249
throwaway936482 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it's an idiotic idea. In the UK we have an ENTIRELY manual process, no ridiculous voting machines, butterfly ballots or hanging chads and no OCR machines. Just marking a box with a cross, sticking it in a box and then a load of volunteers physically counting the votes while representatives of the parties and anyone else who wants to wander in watches. Postal votes are treated the same and counted at the same ti…

How many contests do you have on your ballot? Here's a sample ballot from Alameda County, California in 2018 (starting on page 12 going to page 25). That wasn't a presidential year, so this is a bit on the low side. https://www.acgov.org/rovapps/vig/236/38.pdf Manual counts aren't practical in the US because our ballots can be crazy long with tons of contests and candidates. It would be very error-prone to do this ma…

1. If there is more than 1 contest going on at a time you have more than 1 ballot. Again this is a simple solution to a dumb problem, you have poorly designed ballots.

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

#259

Post by oAlbe »

staunch wrote: post #250
throwaway936482 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it's an idiotic idea. In the UK we have an ENTIRELY manual process, no ridiculous voting machines, butterfly ballots or hanging chads and no OCR machines. Just marking a box with a cross, sticking it in a box and then a load of volunteers physically counting the votes while representatives of the parties and anyone else who wants to wander in watches. Postal votes are treated the same and counted at the same ti…

This system relies on tens of millions of people trusting a few thousand people not to have been bribed. Seems entirely corruptible and you have no idea whether it has been corrupted or not. You're just left hoping it hasn't been. A system based on math, software, and publicly available data would be accessible to independent audit and verification. And could still be backed by a physical system as well, for added se…

> A system based on math, software, and publicly available data would be accessible to independent audit and verification.

So instead of trusting a few thousands (several thousands, in reality) and a system where you can literally walk in the place where they are counting votes and observe them, you'd rather trust a few tens of people to write the software and audit it? How does that follow?

And this doesn't even take into account the fact that a voting system, as it was mentioned, should be understood by the people voting. Good luck explaining to people what the software and the hardware are doing.

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

#260

Post by RunawayGalaxy »

koheripbal wrote: post #163
barbegal wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Prove that your blockchain hasn't been compromised by a sophisticated 51% attack.
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