Accurate voting is a serious issue in many democratic nations.

I'm looking at you, United States of America. Everyone knows the reputation of the Diebold machines that are notoriously bad at taking people's votes since they were installed. Instead of using computers to steal people's votes, why don't we use them to secure voting instead?

Background information

The cornerstone of legitimacy for any democratic system is the voting system and whether it is fair and accurate. If you can't trust the results of the ballot box, how can you trust your elected representatives? Thus the questions regarding how votes can be stolen and elections manipulated is of great importance. Here are some links:

Hacker demonstrates how voting machines can be compromised

Mathematician suspicious of electoral fraud hires lawyer to force Kansas to hand over voting records

Diebold machine flips votes - caught on camera

I think you start to get the picture. Initially computerized voting was supposed to be faster, more accurate and more secure. It turns out that it takes longer than filling out a paper ballot, inaccurate and untrustworthy. Although a certain small group of interests profit, this sort of situation is completely unacceptable for a modern democratic country.

Proposal for the solution: Blockchain based voting

Imagine a system similar to Bitcoin except using the concept to verify elections instead of transactions. Every citizen of the country (perhaps using social security # or similar ID as a identifier) is randomly issued one private key with one vote. The private key allows the vote to be 'unlocked' and then 'spent' voting on any one candidate much like spending a coin. Already this system eliminates double-voting because the verification that everyone has only voted once is shown on the blockchain for all to see.

As people vote the tally (blockchain) is updated and published. For those that prefer the paper-ballot system, a similar approach could be taken such as paper wallets. The private key is written down on paper, brought to the voting booth and input to the computer, verified and then the vote is cast. Although I personally prefer paper ballot systems, they aren't immune to manipulation such as ballot-stuffing, double voting and inaccurate tabulation.

Final thoughts

It's hard to be left wondering whether your vote was counted at all, with no way to verify that it was added to the final tally. It's also impossible to know whether it was counted properly, for the right person. It's also possible that after it's all tallied up, someone messes up and reverses the final tally: 350 votes for A team and 344 for B team. Or was it 344 for A team and B team got 350? Darn I forget. The point being these mix-ups actually happen and should be addressed with serious gusto, or we're going to be in a lot of trouble down the road when Mark Zuckerberg runs for president and Facebook starts building voting machines.

Look into this more here http://blackboxvoting.org/