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How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting
blottsie (3618811) writes If implemented correctly, the proliferation of online voting could solve one of the biggest problems in American democracy: low voter turnout. The 2014 midterms, for example, boasted the lowest voter turnout in 72 years. Making it easier to vote by moving the action from a polling station to your pocket could only increase turnout, especially in the primaries. Making online voting work is infinitely harder than it initially seems. However, in the past few years, there's been a renewed effort to solve the conundrum of online voting using a most unexpected tool: Bitcoin. The key idea is this: The main job in online voting is ensuring that the election system records someone’s vote the way they intended. Running votes over the blockchain, which is public, creates an auditable trail linking a person and their vote. Bitcoin-enabled voters don’t have to place their trust in Florida ballot counters trying to discern the difference a hanging chad and a dimpled chad—nor in black box online voting systems from private companies where what’s happening inside is a mystery. The proof is right there on the blockchain.
One can already vote with a minimum inconvenience by being a permanent absentee. I can't remember the last time I actually went anywhere to vote, and haven't missed a single election in decades. Those who are not voting will, for the most part, carry on not voting with or without bitcoin.
It's not a given that low voter turnout is a problem. We don't need more low-information voters (89% agree that DHMO should be banned) and we don't need to coerce those who do not vote to signal their non-consent to the system.
Blockchain technology could make voting more reliable, but that's a separate issue - don't confuse the two.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's not worth going out of our way to make voting MORE accessible than it already is. There are multiple polling places in every city of any size across the nation. People who are so uninterested in the process that they can't either go to their local poll or drop an absentee ballot in the mail are VERY likely to have a misinformed, useless opinion.
There are any number of areas regarding voting that I'd rather see time spent on instead of being able to claim "There's an app for that".
Just put the damn ballot on paper. Computers will never be trustworthy. It is impossible.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There is no way that you can conduct online voting and ensure that the voter is not being intimidated. Offsite voting is a necessary evil for certain people (the handicapped and those who are unavoidably out of town on election day) but it does not need to be expanded to cover everyone. Here in New York we very specifically keep those most likely to intimidate you out of the voting booth, i.e., your employer and union official. The people that can hold a financial gun to your head if you don't vote the way they want. With online voting (or offsite voting on paper, i.e., absentee ballots) there is no way to actually ensure that the voter doesn't have a gun (real or proverbial) aimed at their head when they click 'submit.' For this reason alone I will always oppose it and other measures (vote by mail) that take people out of the polling place.
The summary also makes the assumption that low voter turnout is a big problem. This is an oft-repeated claim but there's zero evidence to suggest that increased participation rates equate to better results. People choose not to vote for many reasons; apathy likely being the biggest one, followed closely by a generalized disgust with the available options. "None of the above" is a perfectly valid option in an election, whether exercised via the write-in for "Mickey Mouse" or by staying home on Election Day.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"creates an auditable trail linking a person and their vote"
Being able to verify how someone voted defeats the whole point. You need ANONYMOUS, but verifiable voting, if that's at all possible. Otherwise, you get into the whole issue of vote buying, intimidation, public shaming, etc.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Would this amount to a poll tax?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Not that I'm in favor of this, but... that isn't exactly true.
You can have an audit trail and anonymity so long as the source of the audit trail is known only to the originator.
If each year I am assigned a token at random, and the assigning system tracks only that a token was assigned, then I can look at that token and see it's audit trail to ensure that my vote was recorded correctly.
Anyone else looking at the audit trail of that token would be able to see how that token was used, but not by who.
Not sure I'm on board with online voting, but I don't believe that the audit trail and anonymity are mutually exclusive.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
let's review the evidence. biggest Bitecon shop rifled and shut down broke a year ago. last week, the next biggest Bitecon shop was hit for something around $5 million in Bitecon. TV hosts wave around a new wallet on the air and it's emptied before the videotape rolls on the story.
and somebody wants to run VOTES over this leaky scam system? almost as bad at the Supreme Court allowing billionnaires to buy all the elections they want.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The counter-argument goes that if the voter can pull out their generated ID tag to verify their vote after the fact, a standard-issue "thug" (representing any malicious party) can also use that ID to verify that the votes went to their preferred candidates. So it's not really anonymous at all.
The problem is that you yourself can provide the token to, let's say, an employer forcing you to vote a certain way, an abusive spouse or someone who wants to buy your vote.
The current systems prevent that or make it hard to do in any systematic way. Even taking a picture of your ballot won't help, as you can always get it exchanged for a fresh one.
What?
As your employer, I'd like to see your randomly drawn ID, you know, to verify that you really voted during the two hours you were off.
Here's the public part of a randomly drawn ID, plus a certificate signed by the election office. With the public part, you can verify that I voted but not for whom. For all you can tell, I voted for Mickey Mouse.
The secret ballot has two purposes. one is it maintains your privacy and that's good for you. The other is it prevents selling your vote and that's good for the public. If I have a bitcoin ballot then I can easily transfer that coin to someone else to vote. thus I can sell my vote and the buyer knows for sure how it will be cast.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
how is this in the same sentence as Bitcoin?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
While that sounds good there are people that still round up the opposition in to one area and shoot them.
It is unlikely to be a problem to you or me but encouraging a system that makes it possible is a bad thing for the world.
That's possible yes. I guess you could already snap a photo of your completed election ballot to show to those thugs, but you're right that it'd be easier for them to verify votes if they can coerce you into giving up your ID.
If you ask me having those kinds of thugs around in the first place is a pretty good sign of a broken system, but it's a fair point anyway.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
No vote is better than an ill-informed / non-informed vote.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No need to shoot. If you don't vote me, my guys will decide to have their business in front of your shop, and if their business scares all your customers away... well that's your problem.
And you are wrong. Once inserted into the blockchain, and since it is recored, it will be counted. Short of someone on the inside of the computer coded, secretly inserting miscounts (which become statistical anomalies) it would assure correct and accurate counts.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So the employer can demand your token, and you give it up. Would you give up your personal email password? Facebook password? The actions of the employer are illegal. Why aren't you reporting him?
It would be your word against theirs. How would you prove that they asked for your ID? It isn't like anybody with half a brain would fire you on the spot if you refused. They'd just wait for you to make a mistake, or decide they don't need your services in six months.
Today, nearly all absentee voting will allow voting outside the view of poll employees. So the employer can fill out ballots for all employees, have them come in and sign them. Then the employer sends them in. Oh, and on election day, everyone has a double-shift with no breaks (no time to vote). At best, the voter can send in a second, spoiling one (or both) votes, but I've not seen any absentee system used in the US that would allow the voter to control his own vote in that situation. If the employer is so aggressive about ensuring votes for his preferred candidate, why aren't more doing this already?
They're too cheap to have 100% of their employee population standing around for two shifts with nothing to do on election day?
If you're going to make people fill out absentee ballots and then chain them in a dungeon, sure, you can abuse the current system. However, it is MUCH harder to do it today than in a system where people take home receipts. It is also unnecessary.
Just collect electronic votes with human-readable/machine-readable audit trails. The electronic tally can be used to provide instant results. The paper audit trail can be audited using random sampling to verify the integrity of the electronic tally. The paper trail would be printed behind a window so that the voter could see that it was recorded correctly, but it would not be modifiable or removable by the voter. Then you can use all the usual controls to prevent tampering with the paper.
No vote is better than an ill-informed / non-informed vote.
Ya know, I'm not so sure about that. The whole premise of democracy is that we are, collectively, smarter than any of us individually. Somehow, the average of the guesses comes out as closer to the truth than any of the guesses. Uninformed voters on one side of the issue cancel out uninformed voters on the other side of the issue.
There's a lot of reason to be dubious about that, but to be frank, the vast majority of voters are very uninformed about practically every issue. Any significant topic requires years or decades of study to be really expert on. And most voters will go in with nothing more than they've read in the newspaper, or worse, on TV. Take any topic you actually know in detail; do you think that any reporter has ever understood it? Here on Slashdot we regularly complain about how science and technology are misrepresented and misunderstood. Do you really think that reporting on energy issues, the economy, or foreign affairs is any better?
I'm always glad for people to want to know more, but practically everybody goes into the voting booth with a massive case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, convinced that they know the topic far better than they actually do. The whole point of democracy is to try to take that into account. Usually, we're actually voting for people to represent us, and they often know it a bit better than we do (or at least, they have advisers who do), but in the end we're really just hoping that the representative on the side of the truth will have slightly more followers than the representative who has it wrong. Democracy is designed to expose a slight bias towards reality, even if few of the individuals involved can actually justify that bias.
I'd love to live in a meritocracy where only the best experts are making decisions... but who's going to pick those experts? I'd be happy if it were me, but I bet you wouldn't be. Democracy is the closest thing I've ever seen to a fair way to pick. And if so, it only works because everybody gets to take their best guess. I suspect that the ones who know enough to know that they don't know very much are better qualified to take their guess than those who don't even know that they don't know.
Especially when you've got a news media which gets its best viewership by telling them how smart they are and that all of the smart people agree with them. They're the most dangerous voters of them all, and they vote in droves. And I can't think of any fair way to keep them out of the polls. So everybody might as well go out and vote.