Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#11

Post by matt4077 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:05 AM UTC

ClayFerguson wrote: post #7

I invented something like this myself that used a checksum based form of ensuring data can't be tampered with. The key point is that anyone can look up how it recorded THEIR vote without anyone else being able to. Uses a hash of social security number for that (plus other personal identifiers). Websites can be written to allow a simple form-based trivially simple gui that allows anyone to look up how their vote was r…

Pen & Paper will always be more trustworthy, transparent, and safe than any blockchain-bs.

Part of the reason is that to compromise a paper ballot you need thousands of corrupt volunteers (and if you can find them, you have much bigger problems anyway).

The other part of the argument is that the security isn't enough for a voting system. You need /obvious/ security, and a mathematical proof just isn't obvious enough.

Also: ethereum. And your system probably suffers from allowing people to prove who they voted for.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#12

Post by barnacs » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:09 AM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

Paper voting doesn't allow for much more citizen involvement than most "democratic" countries have today. You can hold elections every few years, maybe a referendum once or twice a year at most, but any more than that and it becomes inconvenient, inefficient and not so cheap.

As a citizen, I want to be more involved. Even in a representative democracy, I want to hold my representatives responsible for their actions. I want to be able to recall them. I want to support some bills and oppose others. I want to have votes in my local community about building a playground or whatever. I may even want to propose policies and have other citizens vote or maybe even crowdfund it.

While I do not support this specific proposal, I think we should move on from paper elections.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#13

Post by ianstormtaylor » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:22 AM UTC

barnacs wrote: post #12

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

Paper voting doesn't allow for much more citizen involvement than most "democratic" countries have today. You can hold elections every few years, maybe a referendum once or twice a year at most, but any more than that and it becomes inconvenient, inefficient and not so cheap. As a citizen, I want to be more involved. Even in a representative democracy, I want to hold my representatives responsible for their actions.…

Is that actually a good thing though? (I'm honestly not sure.)

I would think that as the response time becomes shorter and shorter, the system starts being more and more volatile. One of the benefits of the current system is its stability. It's unfortunate (depending on your point of view) that certain causes don't move faster, but at the same time it also prevents bad ideas from moving fast.

Not only that, but as the involvement is more and more frequent, it might have the effect of numbing people more. Right now national elections are a big deal because they are so rare, so it adds a bit of "moral weight" to the whole process. If they are as easy as pulling out your phone and tapping a button from your couch, is that actually going to result in more "correct" (in terms of long-term viability) decisions being made?

These things might not actually matter though, because they might have equal and opposite benefits that balance things out.

I'm sure many people smarter than me have debated this topic from both sides. If anyone knows of any articles/papers on these ideas I'd love to read them!

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#14

Post by ianstormtaylor » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:26 AM UTC

misterhtmlcss wrote: post #2

I was thinking the same thing. Glad someone is doing this, because the hope is obviously it'll massive increase the efforts anti-democratic individuals or orgs need to invest to determine the outcome of an election; which isn't all that high today.

Do you have any evidence of it being easy to influence the outcome of the election?

As far as I can tell there are a ton more exploits to be had, from less powerful (money, connections, etc.) people in an electronic system than in our current paper system.

Right now the only individuals who have massive influence on an election are the candidates themselves (and maybe some specific people on their team).

The next closest individuals are probably the extremely, extremely wealthy, and there aren't that many of them, and they don't even have as much power as you'd think.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#15

Post by badsock » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:56 AM UTC

barnacs wrote: post #12

pedrocr wrote: post #4

Paper elections are cheap, reliable and more importantly trustworthy even to people that have no idea what a symmetric key, hash or blockchain even is. But we had to go and screw up by creating extremely insecure voting machines and then come up with crazy schemes like this one to fix them. Do people really think all this complexity is a good thing? Paper elections are very well understood but you can easily come up…

Paper voting doesn't allow for much more citizen involvement than most "democratic" countries have today. You can hold elections every few years, maybe a referendum once or twice a year at most, but any more than that and it becomes inconvenient, inefficient and not so cheap. As a citizen, I want to be more involved. Even in a representative democracy, I want to hold my representatives responsible for their actions.…

Some context: Switzerland has votes on issues about four times a year, and they managed to do this with paper, mostly via mail (if someone local knows otherwise, please correct me).

Recently they tried out e-voting, with what I consider predictable results:

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voting-with-a-click_hacking-fear...

Also, I agree with ianstormtaylor in that I don't think that what you're proposing would necessarily be good. You need a political system that you trust will promote wise decision makers, and then you need to not micromanage them. If the people who get elected can't be trusted to make good decisions on a scale of several years, then the political system needs to be corrected, not expanded.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#16

Post by barnacs » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:57 AM UTC

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #13

barnacs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper voting doesn't allow for much more citizen involvement than most "democratic" countries have today. You can hold elections every few years, maybe a referendum once or twice a year at most, but any more than that and it becomes inconvenient, inefficient and not so cheap. As a citizen, I want to be more involved. Even in a representative democracy, I want to hold my representatives responsible for their actions.…

Is that actually a good thing though? (I'm honestly not sure.) I would think that as the response time becomes shorter and shorter, the system starts being more and more volatile. One of the benefits of the current system is its stability. It's unfortunate (depending on your point of view) that certain causes don't move faster, but at the same time it also prevents bad ideas from moving fast. Not only that, but as th…

Initially it would probably be a mess. But I also think more involvement is the only way to build a more responsible, informed, interested citizenry. People need to feel that they can affect things, that they have a say in policies.

I think a lot of people are indifferent because it doesn't seem to matter whether they vote for the red or blue team every few years, doesn't seem to be improving. If they had a slider to set their preferred allocation of public spending and they could vote on specific proposals about , they would probably be more inclined to participate and do so in a more responsible manner.

You can't force people to participate though. Maybe you could optionally delegate your vote, and then it would be effectively the same level of involvement as with the current hands-off representative system. But at least you could still withdraw or reassign the voting power at any time.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#17

Post by noobermin » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 3:03 AM UTC

badsock wrote: post #15

barnacs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper voting doesn't allow for much more citizen involvement than most "democratic" countries have today. You can hold elections every few years, maybe a referendum once or twice a year at most, but any more than that and it becomes inconvenient, inefficient and not so cheap. As a citizen, I want to be more involved. Even in a representative democracy, I want to hold my representatives responsible for their actions.…

Some context: Switzerland has votes on issues about four times a year, and they managed to do this with paper, mostly via mail (if someone local knows otherwise, please correct me). Recently they tried out e-voting, with what I consider predictable results: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voting-with-a-click_hacking-fear... Also, I agree with ianstormtaylor in that I don't think that what you're proposing would necessari…

Switzerland has a population of 8.4M, about the population of NYC. US has >300M and a land area two orders of magnitude larger than Switzerland.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#18

Post by noobermin » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 3:06 AM UTC

barnacs wrote: post #16

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually a good thing though? (I'm honestly not sure.) I would think that as the response time becomes shorter and shorter, the system starts being more and more volatile. One of the benefits of the current system is its stability. It's unfortunate (depending on your point of view) that certain causes don't move faster, but at the same time it also prevents bad ideas from moving fast. Not only that, but as th…

Initially it would probably be a mess. But I also think more involvement is the only way to build a more responsible, informed, interested citizenry. People need to feel that they can affect things, that they have a say in policies. I think a lot of people are indifferent because it doesn't seem to matter whether they vote for the red or blue team every few years, doesn't seem to be improving. If they had a slider to…

One of the ways to help that feeling is to get people more involved in local government. Local government has a lot more of an impact on them and they have much more power in such matters.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#19

Post by nickik » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 3:15 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #17

badsock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: Switzerland has votes on issues about four times a year, and they managed to do this with paper, mostly via mail (if someone local knows otherwise, please correct me). Recently they tried out e-voting, with what I consider predictable results: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voting-with-a-click_hacking-fear... Also, I agree with ianstormtaylor in that I don't think that what you're proposing would necessari…

Switzerland has a population of 8.4M, about the population of NYC. US has >300M and a land area two orders of magnitude larger than Switzerland.

The US also has more people that work on that sort of thing. I don't see why it should not be able to scale.

Sure it might get harder with increase scale, but I don't see it as a huge problem.

Re: Votebook – A proposal for a blockchain-based electronic voting system [pdf]

#20

Post by pooper » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 3:24 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #17

badsock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some context: Switzerland has votes on issues about four times a year, and they managed to do this with paper, mostly via mail (if someone local knows otherwise, please correct me). Recently they tried out e-voting, with what I consider predictable results: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voting-with-a-click_hacking-fear... Also, I agree with ianstormtaylor in that I don't think that what you're proposing would necessari…

Switzerland has a population of 8.4M, about the population of NYC. US has >300M and a land area two orders of magnitude larger than Switzerland.

> Switzerland has a population of 8.4M, about the population of NYC. US has >300M and a land area two orders of magnitude larger than Switzerland.

Can we start with the city? Bill de Blasio (bless his heart) won 282,344 votes in the 2013 Democratic Primary. What's worse is Lhota won his primary with just 32,236 votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_mayoral_election...

I hate to agree with President Obama on this topic but I have to agree with him. The first problem we need to tackle is not to fix the electoral process. The first problem we need to tackle is getting people to actually care enough to show up and show up in large enough numbers so we can effect change.