A major problem is that if you are able to verify who you vote for, you can either sell your vote or be coerced (by, say, your abusive husband) to vote a specific way.
Since I'm able to retract my vote, I cannot sell it. And since I can retract my vote, I cannot be coerced in any way.
Traditionally there are people representing different parties watching over each other, until they eventually publish the intermediate results from whatever region they are responsible for. And all aggregate results beyond that are based on public information. Some people want to replace that with cryptographic systems with provable properties. But any system that lets you vote anywhere remains vulnerable to voter coercion.
The ones who have actual access, are from the government.
And because of that, the final truth is never in the database, but in the physical votes. Which results in a huge problem if there are no physical votes.
It immediately raised a suspicion, could the government use "updating a vote" to change the vote of the voter after they voted. There were suspicious bursts of votes for government candidates during early morning (3:00-12:00 AM) between 2nd and 3rd voting days. Could it be re-votings? Who knows, public blockchain has no way to find this out.
How can an observer distinguish between a real voter voting the second time, and the government voting second time in his name?
Furthermore, to cancel the previous vote, you need some way to link the new and old ballots. In the case above, there was a non-public database (a blockchain), unavailable to observers, which kept the needed information. And theoretically it could allow de-anonymize the voters.
So what I wanted to say that electronic voting is a garbage only convenient for fraudsters.
[1] https://github.com/moscow-technologies/blockchain-voting_202...
Passports would need to become like hardware wallets with screens such as Trezor. Who's firmware and design are open source.
The screen means I can see what I'm signing and later be shown what I signed.
Now, I don't want people to know who I vote for. So we make it e-passport gate so that no one can enter with me.
Now I want to be able to verify my vote at a later date but not let others know it was me. Well this too is solved by multiple cryptocurrencies like monero and z-cash.
I can go to my local town hall enter a room alone using a e-passport style gate and check my vote at the machine. My device can verify my vote.
Someone with the vote can only see that 1 of N voters did it. Where N is so large they can't identify me.
No duplicate vote is possible.
Literally no one would agree to this however.
I can't claim to be a crypto expert.
But hiding a transaction and it's value among other transactions is perfect for voting.
As I understand it Monero uses ring signatures to make it so it's not possible to know which individual of a group initiated a transaction, and it's zero knowledge proof system means it can be verified that a particular transaction is valid despite this.
To my layman mind that seems to be good enough, every vote can be verified by any party as valid (no double spending or double voting took place).
You can never narrow down who made a particular vote beyond a large pool of people.
You can't tell where any transaction went (you don't know who was voted for).
At the same time with my private key I can see my vote.
The only thing needed for voting is the e-passport style gates.
Certainly it won't just get a case of use monero, they would need to design the system for voting.
- confirms (paper goes down the box) and exits the booth
or
- cancels (paper is burned) and votes again
To show you the user something and no one else without leaving a paper trail.
The ability to enter a single person voting booth through a e-passport style gate and security to check your devices screen again so a perk that could be implemented.
The public ledger of all votes that could be checked to enforce no duplicate voting, generate a full list of who voted if desirable, and you with your device in a secure room check your vote.
Are all features of cryptocurrency systems that exist allow.
All of that could be optionally allowed or disallowed for a future cryptography enabled voting system.
The e-passport style gate to single person voting room is the physical security needed to ensure people don't coerce each other more than today. And optionally make coercion impossible at the cost of some people not being able to vote (people who need someone in the room with them as they do in the booth with them today).
Without a print out
Besides, that of course is entirely optional.
It's not something we can do today but something that *could* be chosen to add to such a system.