wh1te_n0ise

Yet people gladly trust TLS when they're making online purchases, despite many of them having no understanding at all of how it works beyond the little green lock on their URL bar.

Lack of understanding should not be a deterrent. If it's a public blockchain-based system, people can use open source clients that are coded by an entity they trust (like people use Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc. for web browsing). If people don't trust the blockchain clients, it's likely a UI issue.

I see voting systems as multiple components. You don't necessarily need to use the government or the existing structure to issue the hardware tokens - I was just proposing that as one potential idea as logistically it seems like it'd be the easiest.

You could set up some decentralized system like the Certificate Authority system that we have for the internet perhaps to verify & issue tokens. That would be fairly difficult, however, as there would also have to be assurance that a single person has not been issued multiple tokens. There would likely require there to be a central registry somewhere.

You can't just "PGP it" in this scenario, as it needs to be one token per voter - and that has to be provable. In a "PGP"-like system - while you can receive higher assurance of identity through other people signing your public key, it provides no assurance against tokens being associated with fake identities, or people owning multiple tokens.

Regardless - identification is just one aspect of voting.

You also need some way to store the votes that have been cast (while maintaining integrity, verifiability, confidentiality) as well as a way to tally the votes (while maintaining integrity, verifiability, confidentiality). That's the component that the blockchain would serve to fill.

There are entities in existence that issue identification (SSNs, Passports, Drivers License) - why not just have them issue a hardware token once you've proven your identity to them?

If someone steals the hardware token, you could get it revoked and have a new one re-issued; just as you'd do if you lost your Passport of Drivers License.

The hardware token (as well as some form of biometric identification) could be your assurance of one-man-one-vote. The hardware token would do all of the key management needed to submit votes to the blockchain. The blockchain by itself would not be the full solution - only part of it.

First off, I hope you realize that in the current paper systems that your "union boss" could literally walk down to the voting station themselves and give them your name & birthday and just submit votes on your behalf without needing to "coerce" or "buy" any votes.

Regardless, I said that it was dependent on the implementation. If I am able to change my votes at a later date, then who cares if my union boss can pull me into his office and force me to vote a certain way? I'll just go in that evening and issue a corrective vote and be issued a new "view key" associated with that transaction and my boss would be none the wiser.

Or you could have a system where the blockchain isn't public, but rather it's only accessible by a few designated government machines. Then for auditing purposes if you want to verify your vote, you go into a facility (no electronics [besides your identification] allowed) with your "view key" and prove your identity (biometrics, smart card) and then you're able to then receive assurance that your vote was recorded as expected by viewing the transaction from one of the government machines.

Then your union boss doesn't have the ability to check your votes.

You know what I love though - people who make all discussions black and white and don't consider the large spectrum of possibilities.

I can see how that would be a concern, and I'd say to that - it really depends on the implementation.

You could have a blockchain-based system where everything is public (say, like Bitcoin), which from your perspective would be bad.

You could have a blockchain-based system where you need a "view key" in order to actually view the details of a particular transaction (say, like Monero), which from your perspective would also be bad.

In the latter system I'm describing, you could have a procedural control that you have a choice of receiving your "view key" or something along those lines to deter coercion and vote buying.

Other possibilities would be allowing voters to change their votes at a later date, or creating a system that allows voters to vote remotely such that they could do so in the comfort of their own home where they'd be (presumably) free from coercion and other influences.

It doesn't need to be at scale if the elections are won by very small margins. Successfully executing voter fraud on a few key districts can sway an entire election.

I'm confused how you can say paper ballots have any of those properties.

Once you've handed off your paper ballot, it's no longer "transparent". You have no signature (physical or digital) that verifies that your vote was counted in the final tally. You also have no proof that all other votes submitted in that election were legitimate votes from real, identified eligible voters. Ballot stuffing and mis-recording of votes are both forms of fraud that have been performed under the so-called "transparent" paper voting systems...

"Accountable" implies that you have adequate identification. Last time I checked (last presidential election), I only needed to provide a name and a birthday in order to vote, which are both things that are publicly available information. Without adequate identification of people (see: biometrics + smart cards, ideally), you don't have accountability or even the ability to reliably detect voter fraud. Why would you want to favor a paper system which relies on people (who can be paid off, blackmailed) when better solutions exist that get rid of some of the possibility of human error?

Personally, I'd rather have a public electronic voting system where all voting transactions are stored on a public blockchain. That way I can verify the vote tallies for myself and I can also verify that the vote that I submitted was actually recorded and included on the public blockchain. You add in the assumption that all voting machines must be closed source and un-audited - but that's not an inherent property of voting machines. Governments could just as easily use open source and publicly-audited voting machines.