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Comment by sigmoid10 | Hacker News Reader

>I.e., you can have a paperless blockchain solution IFF you abandon vote secrecy. That is a very tough to swallow pill.

This is false. I know this is a common thought on HN because some formerly popular youtuber did a video about this topic that is still regularly reposted here, but he was already wrong in theory back then and it is certainly wrong in practice today. Secrecy/anonymity and verifiability are no longer mutually exclusive as anyone who is well versed in modern cryptography will be able to tell you.

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> some formerly popular youtuber did a video about this topic

I don't know about this event, do you have a link?

Probably Tom Scott

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

I'd appreciate some references. That's not because I'm trying to put you down with a request for references, but clearly you have seen them, and I'd like to see them.

Also, you still have to convince the public.

I agree that convincing the public is a separate issue. But on a technical level, these problems are solved. See e.g. this modern implementation: https://github.com/vocdoni/davinci-paper This is a pretty recent one, but the mathematical foundation dates back to the late 80s.

There have also been earlier implementations like this one: https://github.com/benadida/helios (corresponding paper https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec08/tech/full_papers/a...), although it still lacked coercion resistance. But it already uses zero knowledge proofs, which is at the core of anonymous yet verifiable systems.

Thanks. Right, this is zero-knowledge proofs. I expected as much. I think that ZK can be made to work for secure voting, though I don't believe that the public can be expected to understand it. I'll have to read this, but I suspect that there is a way for possessors of secret keys to choose to decrypt ballots and violate ballot secrecy.

You know what's easy to understand? Hand marked paper ballots cast anonymously with multiple witnesses to simple optomechanical counting using open hardware and software. The crypto based security can be used to ensure that only a valid ballot enters the vote You have to combine the crypto with a paper trail. Otherwise it can be manipulated by mitm or a bad actor with the keys. Blockchain has more than enough attack vectors.

And so many special rules. Observers are constantly thrown out or denied rights, because even the local officials running the show don't know the rules. Because, in the end, it is not that simple. Berlin right now has an issue that they forgot to specify which of multiple valid method are used to calculate the excess mandates.

It is never as simple as just some paper ballots. But we have a bigger problem. It's a problem at scale. We have all those issues because we do not have enough experts to run all the voting locations at once. The observers need to understand the rules and their rights. The official needs to do so, too. The work of an expert is not scalable, because he cannot be at all places at once.

However, an expert who audits the software is very scalable. One expert can find issues everywhere.

> because even the local officials running the show don't know the rules.

Or because they do.

Exactly.

>Otherwise it can be manipulated by mitm or a bad actor with the keys.

That is not true. Or at least there are no known attack vectors. Modern privacy coins would not work otherwise.

It's totally not solved at a technical level, because the problem IS convincing the public.

The most recent DAVINCI paper is here: https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/2282

See also a summary on how it works here: https://vocdoni.io/en/blog/davinci-paper-zisk-sequencer

We've been working on this protocol for the last years, and we do believe it solves or at least highly mitigates most of the current e-voting issues.

Nonetheless, quantum computing attacks are a new thread to also consider. But solutions to it might exist in the near future.

The various privacy-maximalist cryptocurrencies also serve as a fairly effective example imo, like Monero and Zcash. E.g. it seems pretty reasonable to say "one vote" is "one fixed-value transaction", and the count per member is just "they have X transactions in their receiving account". Both of these (one optionally) hide sender and recipient (and amount) while still having verifiable account-value = number of votes.

> Also, you still have to convince the public.

In terms of working democracy and social governance, we can kill a big flock of birds with a single shot if the public can understand cryptography. Think about it: we live in an age where everything is digital and has a microprocessor inside. Even money is digital. But the "public" can't parse simple logical statements, and they vote for the funniest clown in the race (for a definition of funny). The best this schism can possibly end is if we vote in a Luddite Empire that squashes technology. All other scenarios are far scarier.

Even if the average person had a working understanding of cryptography, which I think is highly unrealistic to begin with, that wouldn't be enough to give the system credibility.

For the system to be credible and resilient against coups it must be possible for the average person to audit the system end-to-end. This is impossible to achieve with online voting, yet trivially achievable with paper ballot systems:

An observer can verify that ID is being verified, that voter list is managed correctly, that every person is issued 1 ballot.

When votes are being counted they can see each ballot and count along with the officials. The number of ballots in the box must match the number of issued ballots based on the voter list.

They can get a copy of the report where they verify that the counts are correct. Then they can verify that the authorities indeed used the same numbers for their polling place in the final counts. And because you have cooperating like-minded observers in every polling place, you know that the final count is correct.

It's like a human-powered Merkle tree.

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