Re:Are Blockchains the Answer for Secure Elections? Probably...
by kosievdmerwe on Thursday August 16, 2018 @09:00PM
(#17779583)
Yeah pretty much my view. Paper ballots work. If you can't afford to have paper ballot elections, then your country has bigger issues.
I also question whether electronic voting would be cheaper, since if you want to avoid foreign tampering you would have to develop the machines independently and internally in your country. Hardly a cheap proposition.
Re:Are Blockchains the Answer for Secure Elections? Probably...
by squaredpants on Friday August 17, 2018 @07:57AM
(#17782099)
I think you are kinda missing the point. The blockchain would define a secure protocol for voting, which you could independently verify. In such a distributed trustless system, you could even vote with your own device, provided you have the "keys"/"id" to submit your vote. See my other post in this thread for my opinion in this subject, if you want to further understand what I'm trying to say.
But how does that ensure that “normal” people (who doesn’t have a solid grasp of blockchains and cryptography) can verify that the voting machines themselves actually are running the correct software without having to break out a chemistry set and a microscope to analyse the ICs?
Can the integrity of every machine ever be verified, and even if the system discards votes from machines not running the correct software, now people are having their votes discarded because they used a hacked machine.
With paper ballots it allows pretty much anyone to watch the ballots from being put in the box to when they are being counted and then they can confirm that the ballots haven’t been tampered with.