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Comment by smokeyj | Hacker News Reader

> Everything is bundled in tamper evident seals, observed and signed by members of opposing parties, physically escorted by opposing members, etc.

I don't see why this level of security couldn't be used to randomly and deterministically assign crypto keys that are used for some kind of blockchain voting scheme. Put a thousand pre-known keys in a hat, one thousand people draw keys from a hat, the key is activated on the blockchain and points to a user-defined voting wallet. Now you have anonymous cryptographically verifiable voting with double spend protection. Am I missing something?

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Voting, blockchain, something something, tada.

Voting wallets? Assign crypto keys? You mean just like issuing a ballot? How would someone do a recount? An end-to-end audit? Keep track of who was assigned which key (thereby destroying the secret ballot)? Who voted and who didn't? How do you handle provisional ballots? Etc.

PM me once your proposal satisfies the requirements (works as a replacement) for current election administration systems.

Okay, maybe I'm being too dismissive, which I normally hate. But blockchains, crypto, signatures are not magical. Design the whole system, make it auditable while accounting for information leakage, simulate a few real world elections. Do the leg work, unlike Chaum, Rivet, others. THEN we can talk.

Chaum, Rivest, others have done the leg work though, in real-world binding elections:

"Scantegrity II Municipal Election at Takoma Park: The First E2E Binding Governmental Election with Ballot Privacy"

http://static.usenix.org/event/sec10/tech/full_papers/Carbac...

Thank you. Sort of. Now I have to waste my time figuring out how Scantegrity is flawed.

With the prior Punchscan system, voter privacy is accomplished thru hash collisions. Hiding your ballot in a herd of ballots cast. A trick that works only if your herd (precinct) is large enough and your ballots are simple enough. Definitely would not work (protect voter privacy) in my jurisdiction.

Side note about IRV, as used in Maryland Park: It's now a non-starter. After the handful of well-studied experiments, election administrators are dead set against it. Ballots are complicated, voter education is tough, and IRV necessitates electronic tabulation, which rules out legally required manual recounts. (My jurisdiction often gets over 500k ballots. IRV is not feasible here.)

Any time your voting system for the general public involves "fiddle with this computer/software", you've lost. The public in general can't handle security methods, and many folks just shut their brains down when it comes to computers. Similarly, if you can't explain the method in terms they can understand, then their trust in the system will simply not be there.

People lose wads of cash that are valuable to them; they're going to care even less about their electronic verification file.

So you still have to come in to collect your ballot.

Might as well just vote then and there

This is only a process for registering an anonymous voting wallet. It could subsequently be used to vote for any ballot.

If I install a virus on your grandfathers computer and show him that his vote has been counted when it fact it wasn't, he will not be able to check that.

He could just verify from another computer since the blockchain is public. Bitcoin wallets already have m of n signature schemes that can require multiple devices to sign before being valid transactions.

Awesome, this means I can check my family members voted the way I 'suggested' them to.

I don't know, but I'm commenting to bookmark your comment.

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