Joël Valenzuela
New article for Human Events!
Our elections need a huge overhaul, and I think I know exactly the trick to fix them. I've been voting by blockchain for a half-decade already, it works and the tech is ready.
https://humanevents.com/2023/02/01/the-overhaul-americas-election-system-needs-blockchain-voting
silverpill
@Hyolobrika @thedesertlynx Yeah, e-voting is insecure and can't be fixed.
This is one of the few areas where blockchain solutionism becomes really dangerous.
Hyolobrika
@thedesertlynx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
silverpill
@thedesertlynx Elections rely on centralized government ID system. The government can create fake identities to manipulate the results, and it's nearly impossible to prove it (because no one else knows which voters are real).
Another reason is social in nature, and arguably even more important. The process should be easily verifiable, otherwise attacks can go unnoticed. With some training everyone can verify the process of in-person voting and manual vote counting. But blockchain-based systems with zero-knowledge proofs? I think there are maybe 100 people on the entire planet who can audit such system, and their objections can be easily ignored (it's already happening). Most likely independent audit won't be allowed for "national security" reasons.
What you get is a completely opaque system that shows a pre-programmed result.
Joël Valenzuela
@silverpill Why is that?
Joël Valenzuela
@silverpill I mean they can do that with paper
silverpill
@thedesertlynx Fake IDs? In-person voting makes it difficult because somebody needs to physically move around. If you vote 100 times with different IDs, it can be detected. But digital IDs are free and there's no way to verify them, so operators of the voting system can easily create any number of votes.
silverpill
>absentee ballots and mail-in voting
These are also problematic and often used by governments to manipulate elections.
Each step of the process should be observable and verifiable by an ordinary person from start to finish (except the ballot submission). E-voting is the opposite of that, because at each step you have to trust the software, its operators, auditors etc.
Joël Valenzuela
@silverpill But absentee ballots and mail-in voting have been a thing for a while. And manipulating vote results can happen after it's over and there are no more faces.
silverpill
@thedesertlynx Ordinary person can't read the code, and when blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs are involved the number of people who can audit the code becomes so small that they can be conveniently ignored.
Also, if blockchain is permissioned, you have to trust node operators. I doubt any government would run elections on a public permissionless blockchain, but even in that case, with open-source contracts and open-source app built deterministically and distributed through open-source app stores, that app still needs to connect to an identity server that contains centrally issued government IDs. And if the government doesn't have the monopoly over IDs, then it's not the government.
Joël Valenzuela
@silverpill If it's open-source software you don't have to trust it.
silverpill
@thedesertlynx In other words, to have a fair and secure elections on blockchain you need to live in some kind of anarchist utopia but you probably don't need elections there.
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