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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

#311
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, not sure that would work though. What happens when an ID is stolen? If there is nothing mapping "John Smith" to "ID #12345", then you have no way to revoke IDs because you cannot know if the person claiming the ID is the true owner. Wouldn't that mean stealing IDs will be virtually un punishable, and reselling them very lucrative?

You don't want to issue new tokens either, because you can't know for sure that the token was really stolen. In which it won't take many users who demonstratably can't vote because someone stolen their token for someone to question the outcome. The only point of democratic elections is the legitimacy of the result.

When a large-scale vote is really tight, there will be people questioning its legitimacy anyway, no matter if it's technically correct.

When a vote outcome is clearly in favour of one direction, people don't tend to argue about the legitimacy of it, provided the process was reasonable enough. In that case, the numbers might be argued, but not the outcome unless there is a stronger belief in vote-rigging or voter-suppression.

In the UK, it's quite easy for a small number of individuals to cheat in elections and double-vote, due to how voting wards are assigned when people move home, or have multiple places they live. Or to cheat by pretending to be someone else.

But we assume cheating isn't widespread enough to matter in the grand scheme of things (even if the occasional "wrong" MP did get in on a knife edge), and consider ease of voter participation to be a sounder basis of governance, compared with draconian identity-tracking schemes that deter representation because of all the actual people who for one reason or another would not participate.

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

#312
post #72
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…

+1 for the wonderfully succinct "agreeable consent".

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

#313
- Won't work. People will lose their private keys. Apparently the key is distributed to people on a piece of paper in the mail. That will get stolen--or claimed to be stolen. It will be a mess.

- What's the point of a blockchain here? Is USPS raising money with an ICO? The use of digital signatures is enough. By having a "distributed public ledger" now you open the possibility of getting Sybil attacked. But wait, you say, USPS has their own canoncial version of the chain that they can force everyone to rollback to in case of an attack--then what was the point of a blockchain? You could just have a website that shows a list of public keys and who they voted for. It would be totally auditable by anyone, just as a blockchain would be, without any of the security risks of a blockchain.

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

#315
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…

Why can we have online banking and Tesla autopilot and online medical prescriptions but not online voting?

The requirements aren't as strict for money as they are for civil elections. Financial transactions are frequent, so an error isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. All parties to a transaction know what everyone did; there's no requirement for strong privacy, so being able to roll things back is an achievable (and desirable) failsafe. Money also solves money problems, so you can insure transactions and mitigate losses.

Elections don't have those properties.

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

#316
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…

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'…

Signature verification only really matters if you have several ballots purporting to be from the same person.

Otherwise, they usually don't bother checking the signature.

How do you propose to do user authentication more securely on your phone? Keep in mind that several people may have access to this phone, including spouses and children.

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

#317
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's near impossible to rig or suppress a physical election without a lot of effort No, sadly, it's not [1][2][3]. As some of the texts note, the premise that fraud happens or not is highly politicized. People on one side believe it happens/happened. On the other side, they believe it to be impossible. Though, curiously, those who believe it to be impossible also strongly believe in voter suppression, which would b…

> the premise that fraud happens or not is highly politicized. People on one side believe it happens/happened. On the other side, they believe it to be impossible. > Though, curiously, those who believe it to be impossible also strongly believe in voter suppression, which would be a form of election fraud.... Can't have suppression without fraud[4]. Can have fraud without suppression, as this would be one potential f…

> No, you're missing the point. There is a difference between election fraud (the election itself meddled with by those who administer it) and voter fraud (whereby US or foreign citizens not involved in the administration of the election nevertheless interfere by submitting fraudulent ballots / hacking / etc).

No, I don't think I was "missing the point." I carefully used the word "fraud". Not "electoral fraud". Nor "voter fraud." Specifically, as I did not wish to set up a straw man argument.

Your statement of "the premise that VOTER FRAUD happens or not is highly politicised" is, quite literally, the straw man argument.

First off, fraud, of all forms occurs. Second, the nature of that fraud, who performs it, is who acknowledges it is the issue. Some groups do not believe in voter fraud. Yet, ballot harvesting, which falls clearly under potential fraud, occurs widely in some states, particular those with a strong political leaning in one particular direction. Some groups do not believe in suppression, yet poorly managed elections disenfranchising voters. Again, GA, MI, and others.

Insisting that one or the other doesn't occur is simply factually wrong, there is ample evidence, trivially searchable, that all forms of fraud happen in elections.

The democratic party erroneously thinks one form doesn't happen, and makes arguments like what you made. The republican party doesn't care about the other form, and allows it to happen.

Both parties are at fault here. No one more so than the other.

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

#318
post #140
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…

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…

It won't matter in presidential elections in the US. It's the electoral college that picks. It's in the constitution. States aren't even required to let the citizens pick -- we vote at our individual states pleasure.

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

#319
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…

I think what you're missing is: Moving forward, large scale election rigging will be seen as a feature by those in power.

I hate to say it, but it looks like this has been the case for a while. Look at the history of gerrymandering.

What I see is something that could potentially change the basis of trust for elections in a positive way. It won't be perfect, it won't be without its flaws. But it could significantly reduce multiple forms of fraud, and enfranchise more citizens to vote.

Again, I've always viewed blockchain as a solution in search of a problem. And this might ... might ... be a problem potentially solvable by an appropriately designed/implemented system.

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

#320

It's the illusion of safety. There is no facility for identity verification baked into blockchain. You have integrity for the data allowed on the chain but if you let Russian hackers write to it, it undermines the whole thing. Personally I'd rather go with a PKI system that offers non-repudiation.

Exactly. This is the entire problem with blockchain: it has absolutely nothing to say about the quality of the data entering the system, which is usually the hard part anyway. But it provides this false sense of security because most people have no idea what it actually means. It's only useful when the entire problem space lives inside the blockchain. As soon as it has to reflect something in the real world, all bets…

It's pretty much par for the course for blockchain bullshit. They promise the world but aren't honest about the limitations of the tech. Yeah, you get data integrity assurance within the blockchain, but that says nothing about the accuracy of that data as it's coming in.
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