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

351–360 of 390 posts

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

#351

Post by mhh__ »

nathias wrote: post #284
fsh wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most european countries simply don't have any problems with pen and paper voting. Turnout is typically much larger than in the US with its crazy mix of electronic/mail-in/in-person voting. Probably this is due to automatic voter registration for all citizens, having the elections on Sunday or on a holiday, and (in some cases) not having a first-past-the-post system where a large fraction of votes don't matter anyway.

Yes we do, everyone has them. There is an unimaginable difference between a system where you can have a referendum on =X once per year and it costs 10mil or a system where you can have a referendum every second and it costs ~0. We can then vote for issues directly instead of having people that may or may not (as is most often the case) vote in a way they signal they would before elected.

Referenda are a terrible way of governing.

Think about Brexit - bad faith arguing from one side, constant lying, no plan about how to actually leave, and then a protest vote pushed it last 50% so now we have to leave on a no deal because it's an impossible policy to do in a few years.

A referendum is OK for deep constitutional issues, but policy should not be decided by referenda especially vague ones.

Policy is also quite hard to undo, a direct voting system would like lead to us living in a rent-controlled, capital punishment-ing, overtaxed reactionary world.

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

#352

Post by mhh__ »

tdons wrote: post #46
kfrzcode wrote: post #6

Electronic voting is a terrible idea. Attacks on paper & pen ballot systems are much, much harder to scale. Here's Tom Scott with a great explanation of the basics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

The same argument applies to the internet at large. Shall we move back to filing cabinets because that makes data leaks more difficult? I'm sure that at some point we'll crack the electronic voting nut. But yeah: it's scary and the stakes are high. Then again, we've fixed electronic banking and that runs pretty nicely without many problems -- right?

There are next to no stakes with electronic banking compared to voting. Money is a totally different prospect to rigging an election.

The Trump campaign did some extremely shady things with Wikileaks and the GRU, can you imagine if he was now leading the US through COVID after the Russians were able to compromise the voting system? The constitution does not have a mechanism to deal with it, as far as I can see.

What's the point when paper works already and is almost impossible to scale. Voting is easy

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

#353

Post by mhh__ »

arkanciscan wrote: post #256

See, this is why I'm voting for Trump; whether he means to or not, he breaks shit, and that's what I think has to happen for progress to occur. Joe is status quo. I want an omelette, not a bunch of eggs.

That should be biden's campaign ad. Just have that read out over some photos of people who've died of COVID.

Sure he's undermining American democracy, and openly defending white supremacists (white power anyone) but he breaks shit!

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

#355

Post by detaro »

yalogin wrote: post #354

Why does the USPS have a group that thinks about blockchain? If it exists what is this group ?

lots of enterprise-y companies and organizations get small groups to look at buzzword topics, and blockchain has been hyped for a bunch of postal-adjacent topics. Good chunk of the patent authors seem to be external consultants too... Couldn't find anything specific about in what context USPS specifically looked at that.

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

#356

Post by owenmarshall »

godelski wrote: post #283
owenmarshall wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen systems that allow for a real vote as well as a masked vote - so you get verified votes but have a fake vote to show if you want or need. But consider: at this very moment, right above you is a comment with a picture of ballot that was filled out improperly and lead to a tied election. If we can’t teach people to fill in a circle properly, how in the world do we expect them to use or understand a system t…

Is the problem "people not filling in circles properly" or is the problem that there are other errors. If I'm not mistaken you're referring to the hanging chad issue. The reason it was an issue is because it is hard to see the chad. We're in tech, this should be unsurprising that machines don't work with 100% efficiency. If your machine (human or computer) is marking a ballot it would be unsurprising if the mark is t…

Accounting for errors isn’t the problem.

Teaching people to use and trust an insanely complex system is. I’ve yet to hear any proposal for an electronic voting system that offers any advantages over current systems AND doesn’t require a PhD in mathematics to grasp.

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

#357

Post by sebmellen »

xorcist wrote: post #89
sebmellen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tricky UX issue at the moment, but I'm sure this will be doable in time. The nice thing about blockchains is that once transactions are finalized, the state is known, independently of whether or not the user was hacked. With zero-knowledge proofs, voters could theoretically verify that their "right to vote token" (as I've explained in another answer above) was used to cast a certain vote, without revealing…

> their digital ID cards, which use an underlying blockchain-type system The arguments outlined above are really hard to follow, and doesn't really help the blockchain voting case. Unless something exceptional happened recently, Estonian eID cards are just bog standard ISO 7810/7816 cards. No blockchain or blockchain-like system involved. Just regular X.509 style PKI. They were even affected by the insecure proprieta…

You're correct, I misphrased that somewhat. The government uses a blockchain (the Keyless-Serveless Infrastructure or KSI blockchain) to ensure data integrity in their government systems. As I understand, this is also used for their digital voting system.

> The Estonian Government started testing blockchain technology in 2008, as a response to 2007 cyber attacks and with an aim to mitigate possible insider threats. Estonia was the first nation state in the world to deploy blockchain technology in production systems - in 2012 with the Succession Registry kept by the Ministry of Justice.

> Which Estonian state agencies are utilising blockchain technology today?

> → Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications

> → Ministry of Justice

> → Ministry of Finance

> → Ministry of the Interior

> → Ministry of Social Affairs

See their whitepaper here: https://e-estonia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019sept-faq-ksi-bl....

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

#358

Post by godelski »

owenmarshall wrote: post #356
godelski wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the problem "people not filling in circles properly" or is the problem that there are other errors. If I'm not mistaken you're referring to the hanging chad issue. The reason it was an issue is because it is hard to see the chad. We're in tech, this should be unsurprising that machines don't work with 100% efficiency. If your machine (human or computer) is marking a ballot it would be unsurprising if the mark is t…

Accounting for errors isn’t the problem. Teaching people to use and trust an insanely complex system is. I’ve yet to hear any proposal for an electronic voting system that offers any advantages over current systems AND doesn’t require a PhD in mathematics to grasp.

I'm still mixed on electronic voting, but I do think it should be further researched.

The simple answer I've seen is giving people a hash or code that can be used to verify their vote in a database. Obviously you have to trust the database, but you also have to trust the people counting. I do think there are enabling technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and locally differential privacy that do help with many of the problems, but my understanding is that neither of these is mature enough for use in voting, yet.

But as to general advantages, I think there's two major ones I see. 1) Electronic voting better enables access to voting since people can vote in the comfort of their homes (especially relevant in a situation live covid). 2) Enables better research about candidates. I live in a state with mail in voting and how I vote is with my ballot in front of me while I research all the candidates. In fact, I spend several days voting (sure, not everyone will do this but it makes it easier). Links to official campaign pages or voter guides (we have this in my state with the ballot) would be helpful (and encourage candidates to create them! Because often they don't even have a website, at least on local levels).

As a minor advantage I do see having the ability to perform different voting testing and better answer questions to things like ordinal and cardinal voting systems (by participation not forced A/B testing).

Just because enabling technologies aren't there yet doesn't mean we should shutdown the conversation about how to solve those technological challenges.

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

#359

Post by sebmellen »

the_snooze wrote: post #138
sebmellen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read a some of my comments in this thread addressing various concerns. That said, I would still agree. At least for the next 5-10 years (until we have Starlink-level internet and advances in cryptography/UX), electronic voting systems are not feasible. The nice thing about blockchains is you can avoid DDoS by only allowing people who are "authorized" to "talk to" the blockchain. This can be done by ensuring t…

My main criticism is that these systems don't address the actual challenges that elections face, and the introduction of networked technology likely introduces a lot of poorly-understood risks. I'm a poll worker and a security researcher. Doing the former has really given me perspective on the latter. While a lot of blockchain voting proponents come up with all sorts of schemes to solve ballot-stuffing attacks, the r…

This is why I've also repeatedly stated in this thread that I am not in favor or blockchain-based voting, or even broad-scale mail-in voting (yet).

You're correct to an extent, but I believe with advances in cryptography (zero-knowledge proofs, quantum-secure encryption, etc.), these concerns will fall away. People regularly use their smartphones to do things that are high-risk and need to be secure. Take online banking.

Of course, elections carry an entirely different set of challenges, but to say they can't in theory be solved with careful encryption, analysis, and review, is (in my opinion) foolish. I will again bring up the example of Estonia, which has had massive success with its hybrid in-person / e-Voting system. Estonians have been educated by their government on how the technology works and how it is auditable. Every Estonian carries an ID card which they use to access their bank details, get healthcare, and vote.

I would also argue that technology does solve the problems you listed, and very well!

> Blockchain voting proponents come up with all sorts of schemes to solve ballot-stuffing attacks, the reality is that we really don't care about that on the ground; it's just not a problem we encounter. The real problems come from more mundane things like power outages, being physically locked out of the polling place, poll worker exhaustion, out-of-date records used to verify eligiblity, and voters taking a bathroom break and subsequently walking away with their ballots unaccounted for.

Except for power outages, none of these issues would occur in a remote, electronic voting system. A well implemented e-Voting system could expand voter rights and access to voting tremendously.

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

#360

Post by sebmellen »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #346
svrb wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In case you are interested, the thing preventing those types of shenanigans from happening is volunteer observers from various parties. The inperson and physical nature of things makes it much more difficult to break.

Yes, and volunteer observers could also ensure that the keypairs mailed out to people are never revealed.

1. An airgapped computer running a keypair generation program generates millions of keypairs.

2. This prints these millions of secure keypairs with the keypair facing "downward".

3. In a publicized setting with volunteer observers, the private keys are sealed into envelopes which don't yet have names or addresses on them, and secured with tamper-proof seals.

4. These ballots are sent through another printing system, which adds an address and name to each ballot, at random.

5. The ballots are mailed out.

How is that any different?

Post reply on HN