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

321–330 of 390 posts

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

#321

Post by zelly »

plankers wrote: post #50
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're not the only one. https://xkcd.com/2030/

Aviation and elevators both run on software written by professioanl programmers so I'm not sure that comic makes a good point.

The problem with voting is that it's a distributed systems problem that requires coordination between not just many computers but people that cannot be controlled by code. An elevator can operate as a self-contained system without coordination with other systems. That's why it can be reliable while websites and apps cannot.

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

#322

Post by atoav »

beaner wrote: post #191
revnode wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overwhelming majority of the population doesn't have the capacity to understand what you wrote or why that is true. Even the majority of those who understand why it may be true, cannot say for certain that it is true without inspecting the codebase and its operation. That's a major problem.

I mean, you could say the same thing about current electronic voting or even about how aggregate paper voting is counted behind the scenes. Those things involve some level of trust. I don’t think what I wrote is that difficult to understand. I think you’re underestimating people when you say “the overwhelming majority of the people do not have the capacity to understand what you said.” Really? Not even the capacity t…

In most democratic nations everybody can volunteer to be present at counting. This is in itself a control mechanism, as it would be highly unlikely that meaningful voting fraud would be carried out under the eyes of the observers from multiple parties without anyone making a ruckus.

This is an effective mechanism which apparently convinces enough people that the votes are legitimate.

With blockchain you would have to: - have them understand blockchain algorithms - have them understand computers (so they understand why blockchain might be safe here) - have them understand networking technologies - convince them all of that (and no more/less) is on the actual machines on voting day, for every vote

Have you ever tried explaining what an URL is to your parents? Or how passwords are stored? I am positively convinced that not an insignificant amount of the electorate would just say "there was some hack" when things didn't go their way. And they don't even need to show you proof, because you won't be able to proof the opposite because they won't understand it.

Ultimately to me the benefits of a blockchain system don't really show. It is far to complicated and has too many moving parts.

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

#323

Post by Yetanfou »

sebmellen wrote: post #36
Yetanfou wrote: post #33

Did they also invent a system which protects against voter coercion? If they did not, they might as well stop now since no matter how secure the voting system is its relevance falls down to zero if it is possible for the local gang leader to coerce voters to vote for 'his' candidate - "my man stands behind you to watch you vote for candidate X, if you so much as twitch your little girl gets whipped" (which works but…

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…

"blockchain systems" - which I notice you're invested in by virtue of leading a startup which in some way utilises blockchain technology - may be able to help in reducing the opportunities to cheat on the technology side. This is not the main problem when combating voter coercion, a problem which you noted also exists with mail-in voting. This is true and it is one of the reasons why mail-in voting (as compared to absentee ballots which have to be personally requested by the voter) is rife with problems. Technical solutions can only go so far, even that pin-code system with "fake votes" can be thwarted by using the same threat of force to obtain the "legitimate vote PIN". As far as I can see there are currently no reliable technical solutions to this problem and with that the personal vote at the voting station, using a ballot form and a pencil, is still the best solution.

Sometimes a low-tech solution is the best because it provides a low attack surface and is not easily abused at a massive scale. While there are still some opportunities to mess up things - lost ballot boxes, missing ballot forms, etc - these are easily detected and can be rectified.

For now, I vote for simplicity when it comes to casting my vote.

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

#324

Post by svrb »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #298
dashundchen wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At any scale this method is unusable by the vast majority of people, and it doesn’t prevent tons of other problems such as fake votes added. Next, votes were once public, but it was too easy to prove who you voted for, making buying votes more valuable. These methods would bring that back, since a voter could prove who they voted for. The US did this for its first 50 years, and Kentucky even had it till ~1890. The mo…

> other problems such as fake votes added

First of all, everyone knows we can prove this never happens already, so no big deal.

Second, this is a feature, not a bug.

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

#325

Post by svrb »

tudorhn wrote: post #190
sebmellen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This on-chain voter ID would never have to be "mapped" directly to a voter The government will generate these IDs and then mail them to people. Who’s stopping them from recording the mappings?

What's stopping them from not properly separating the outer and inner envelopes in mail-in voting? Or correlating poll booth entries with checkins? Nothing. The system fundamentally assumes the organization operating the poll is trustworthy.

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

#326

Post by Tagbert »

dnpp123 wrote: post #148
enaaem wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think that system is pretty similar everywhere, probably only in the US you have some weird mechanical machine to cast your vote.

I’m in the US and the weird mechanical machine that casts my vote is a black pen filling in a circle. That can be read quickly by a simple electronic machine or more slowly by humans if there is a question. It’s low tech and hard to influence on a non-trivial scale.

It is true that some places use much more complex systems and I don’t really understand the interest in those. It definitely don’t see any benefit to fully electronic voting, block-chain or otherwise. Voting doesn’t have to be efficient. It needs to be reliable, understandable, and believable.

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

#327

Post by Yetanfou »

sebmellen wrote: post #66
donaltroddyn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The results of blockchain-based elections can be checked after the fact, that's true. But if the votes of the individuals in the electorate can be checked after the fact, the system was badly architected. The USPS solution linked by OP does not link the identity of a voter to their blockchain identity, so coercion remains as much of a threat as in postal voting. Blockchain-based voting systems can be either the least…

> I just think the above argument was made from a fundamental misunderstanding of blockchain technology.

It isn't blockchain which is the problem but wide-spread absentee voting. It doesn't matter whether this is done through mail-in voting, through some blockchain-based app or site, phone-in voting or anything else. The problem is that the person casting the vote can not be assured to do so with privacy and without coercion.

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

#328

Post by Ericson2314 »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #171
Ericson2314 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sta…

> 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.

I am 100 for voting with machines that spit out the cannonical paper which can be hand-reviwed. The point is not the paper UX, but the paper trail.

> 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.

As somebody who has spent weird years pushing Haskell where it wasn't requested I know the feeling exactly, OK? :). It's just an unfortunately truth that the messy unprincipled systems today happens to involve using paper, which is in fact good in principle.

I would love if we had a 3 way discourse on 1) good paper systems 2) bad current hodge-podge 3) bad purely-electronic, in order to speak truths while avoiding status quo bias.

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

#329

Post by ChrisLomont »

svrb wrote: post #324
ChrisLomont wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At any scale this method is unusable by the vast majority of people, and it doesn’t prevent tons of other problems such as fake votes added. Next, votes were once public, but it was too easy to prove who you voted for, making buying votes more valuable. These methods would bring that back, since a voter could prove who they voted for. The US did this for its first 50 years, and Kentucky even had it till ~1890. The mo…

> other problems such as fake votes added First of all, everyone knows we can prove this never happens already, so no big deal. Second, this is a feature, not a bug.

>everyone knows we can prove this never happens

You're claiming extra votes are never added? That everyone knows this? Citation?

In the 2018 North Carolina 9th Congressional District election had votes added illegally, changing the outcome. The subsequent investigation threw out the fraudulent votes, the illegally elected Mark Harris stepped down, and so far about a dozen people have been charged with felonies.

"At the center of the scandal was the Republican operative Harris had employed in Bladen County, Leslie McCrae Dowless, whose operation, according to investigators, included filling out at least a thousand mail-in-ballot requests, many without voters’ knowledge, and deploying a team of friends, family members, and other associates to pose as election officials and collect them." [1]

There's even a case where in Brussels where a bit flip (often the result of a cosmic ray or soft neutron decay) flipped an election, and it was only caught since suddenly there were 4096 more votes than eligible voters.

So ignoring the possibility of fake votes added is short sighted.

Your claim "everyone knows we can prove this never happens" is demonstrably false.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-tearful-drama-of...

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

#330

Post by wtracy »

mulmen wrote: post #310
wtracy wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’m not sure I follow. Are you threatening people’s jobs? Do you think you can reliably get away with that? This is the part where it doesn’t scale. You’re taking on an enormous risk to maybe swing a tight election by committing widespread extortion. It’s totally unrealistic and has nothing to do with voting in person, online or by mail. Your threat would apply to all of them.

> Are you threatening people’s jobs?

Yes.

> Do you think you can reliably get away with that?

Robber barons did reliably get away with it throughout the nineteenth century. That's the whole reason that you don't get to take a copy of your ballot home today.

> It’s totally unrealistic

Well, somebody forgot to tell reality.

Post reply on HN