Blockchain voting: Why isn't this already a thing?
Tomorrow is the most important day in politics, in Finland, kind of. It is the election of the new President. The President is the head of state but, it is the Prime Minister who is the practical head. Since I am foreign, I am unable to vote anyway.
My wife however has been around politics in some way or another for almost two decades (I know, I know 'Anarchy!' and all that) and is interested in these things. Even though she is now a full-time student again, tomorrow she volunteered to be a vote counter at one of the polling stations.
Finland is one of the least politically corrupt countries in the world which is kind of like ranking the goodness of serial killers by how few people they killed. Overall however, the voting process is safe but also very expensive to organise. Less so than places like the US however where people are what many outside of the US would consider, 'politically insane'.
I don't mean who they vote for although that is often questionable, I mean the entire voting process where access to polling stations by location, day and service numbers is so easy to game. I mean, come on, this is the age of smartphones and blockchains yet it seems that we are still living in the relative voting dark ages.
If there is a major conspiracy around elections worth investigating, the snail-paced crawl of voting technology and ease of manipulation is it. Seriously, busloads of voters being driven around to various booths and in some places 4 hour waits while in others it is 15 minutes?
The Steem chain (or a version of) could quite easily handle all of the transactions and be able to have all data immediately accessible without anyone needing to leave their home. Sure, there are limitations currently on much older generations but for most between the ages of 18 and 70, a simple app would be enough to cover an entire country's voting process. There are numerous ways to implement this of course.
Sure, 'Down with the governments!' but currently, this is the system we operate within so cleaning it up and making it more accessible to those who have stake (everyone) should be high on the agenda...Shouldn't it?
In the 2016 US elections 138 million people voted, that is 58% of those eligible, so, who didn't? Well, some people don't vote for many reasons but would you stand out in the cold and wet for hours on a Tuesday (Seriously Tuesday still?) while you should be working at one of your two or three jobs? It shouldn't be so difficult, we have online banking after all, we should be able to work this mess out.
Now, the problem with low voter turnout which is skewed by access to polling stations and a host of other factors is that , it isn't representative at all. It means that 42 percent of people with stake, didn't use it and those 42 percent often lay largely in certain communities.
In Finland, the turn out is around 70 percent which in my opinion is still too low. In a country that has one of the highest educated populations in the world, it is still the lowest educated who are underrepresented. Some might think this is a good thing that they do not have a say but, in time, they can become an uneducated, disenfranchised force that want to burn it all without the sensitivity for which parts to keep. That is another post perhaps though.
Australia has compulsory voting but, it is still cumbersome and unwieldy to use and expensive to operate and police. Just think about all of the security required at the various voting booths around the world, especially in countries in turmoil where it is possible to threaten voters at the stations or encourage them to stay home altogether.
Perhaps, all voters should be able to vote from the comfort of their home and it need not even be on the day, just like a post here, there could be a voting window and once the post closes, the election is decided. We already do this here.
Maybe there could be portals for each candidate where a candidate can represent themselves, specialists can verify the information and give opinions, and the public can also have their say if they choose. And, candidates information is all immutable on the blockchain as are those who are looking to influence the outcomes in some way.
Wouldn't it be interesting if only funds that have been logged onto the blockchain are usable for campaigning? Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a set amount of personal data that must be presented and logged onto the chain if running for president of a country?
There are too many grey areas to hide in places where there need not be, there are too many opportunities to game the system and manipulate a population when there are solutions now available that will immediately stop this or prevent future issues.
Corruption at government levels is the worst kind as they are meant to be working in the best interest of the people. They are public servants. Sure, not everyone is going to agree with how everything is handled but the arguments shouldn't be hijacked by irrelevancies and smoke and mirrors. There should be a higher level of transparency and immutability of information over long periods of time.
If there ever was a use case for blockchain that will revolutionize society, a solution that simplifies and ensures reliability of voting process information is it. Whoever solves these issues and offers the solution first is going to get some of the largest government buyout offers in history but, they need not sell. They can offer the service in a decentralised form to further safeguard against manipulation.
I do not know of all the technical requirements and considerations at this point but, it is absolutely possible to create a better system that can be utilised by any willing country using fractions of what they currently spend. I wonder how many would actually be willing to do this though considering the amount of control it gives over their populations?
Just think if implemented, it would really take begging for votes and link dropping to a whole new level.
Upvote my nomination for President post, please sir. It is the best nomination, everyone thinks so. Just ask anybody. The best.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
There is one big problem with such a step. It either makes elections easier to manipulate fraudulently or it makes them non-anonymous which in turn can lead to all kinds of problems like vote selling and pressuring people to vote in a certain way for them to keep their jobs. In my opinion, that's the biggest problem with digital voting. If it's anonymous (and I think voting should be), doing digitally makes it too easy to manipulate.
If there is a solution that can be both secure and anonymous, it would be the best possible solution. Maybe there is some complex cryptographic way to give everybody private keys and then have them vote without revealing their identity and be able to somehow check if their vote has been included in the total with a hash or something?
I only have a moment as alone with the baby who is a little demanding today but, I would assume that if there was a unique key provided for a voter that was known (connected to the voter. When it is used it can be burned. But, the vote it casts randomizes the information and disconnects it from the voter. That way, it is possible to know if the key voted but, not how it voted.
I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to work 100% and I'll consult with google on this topic too, but this sounds like a system that is prone to abuse. If the keys are burned, how do you check that the vote wasn't fraudulent. When issuing keys, you need to check that the voter indeed has a right to vote and hasn't gotten another key already. That's a single point of failure where somebody could issue additional keys and having keys burned (though that's the part I'm not sure I understand) means you wouldn't be able to catch them.
Have a great day with your baby! :)
I hade the same thoughts when I read the post.
I often think about that idea and how much more comfortable would it be for people that want to vote. For me to vote in the elections i normally have to drive 20 minutes to the nearest booth, then if i'm lucky i will only wait 15 minutes on line and then drive back home, so in total 1h minimum that i take. If i could vote online safely, 5 minutes would be enough. The advantages of your proposal would be the reduction of costs and more people would vote since its easier and they wouldn't waste time. The disadvantage would be the insecurity and the possibilty of manipulation but i think there are ways to counteract that and i think in the future some version of online voting for elections will be possible.
The reason elections never adopt technology at the front line is that people have the perception that it's easier to manipulate technology to rig elections. And even though block chain would offer transparency, elections are meant to have a layer of anonymity. And yes there are privacy based block chains, but you'd have to convince the masses, that don't know anything about the technology, that this is safe from malicious penetration.
this is a cut and paste from what I answered to @rocking-dave's comment:
I only have a moment as alone with the baby who is a little demanding today but, I would assume that if there was a unique key provided for a voter that was known (connected to the voter. When it is used it can be burned. But, the vote it casts randomizes the information and disconnects it from the voter. That way, it is possible to know if the key voted but, not how it voted.
There must be multiple ways to do this and it has got to be safer than being able to send a friend in to vote for you and have your name crossed off the list even though they are of the opposite sex... I am not saying that anyone I know did this of course ;)
Oh technically there are plenty of ways that it can be done. But then you have to convince the world that it's tamper proof.
To convince me, the technology would need to be open source with publicly available block chain, but then there's a lot of people that might still not be convinced...
i had no information about the Finland presidential election, i want to ask about why don't you have the right to vote even as i saw in some of your post you are 15 years no in Finland so when will you able or you will never be able to vote?
I am a permanent resident, only citizens are allowed to vote in national elections. I can vote in the local council ones only.
aha i got it thank you
God, the voting system was not perfect even in your country. The fact that my country is divided into two parts, the Crimea is lost - our voting system is to blame. When people do not believe in fair elections and take weapons to protect their voice. I believe that elections should be conducted via the Internet. When a young person is issued a passport, he must receive a card to access the electronic voting system. As in the banking system: access to the deposit only on the card. Elections in Ukraine: people go to polling stations, vote for their candidate. The commission considers the votes, and everything is correct, but it is done by people who allegedly mistakenly accept and transfer other data to the center.
Voting for a separate Donetsk republic was a perfect farce. Voter lists were not compiled. A group of people went from town to town and voted. There were so-called carousels: the same people voted and created the impression that the majority of the population voted for the republic. People who did not live in the Crimea voted to join Russia. Who is it? Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes
yes, I am quite sure that there are many countries who do not want a cleanup of the voting processes.
We should vote for ideas, not for representitives
This is another thing completely but is a long way off unfortunately.
That's direct democracy.
If you ask me, people as a majority don't always know what is best. A lot of the biggest human advances wouldn't have happened because the masses would never have voted them. We need Representatives because they can make unpopular decisions for the good of the people.
What I think does need to change though, is this concept of parties. You vote for a representative, and they don't really represent you. They represent their parties. So you end up having to pick between very few (in many countries only two) parties that are probably all heavily influenced by lobbyist.
I guess you could say that political landscapes are centralised, and need to be decentralized.
Amen. Well said. Surely not many actually truly believe that one party or person will be able to accurately represent all of our personal views about issues of government whilst also not buckling to political corruption or being driven out of government. There is no need to throw truckloads of dollars at an endless string of political "leaders" (even well after their term and into their retirement here in Australia). Voting on a leader and expecting them to be able to speak for millions seems extremely outdated and more than slightly naive. Voting on issues and ideas is the only real democracy, and it really can't be corrupted more than the current system with the tools we now have at our disposal.
If the United States is the strongest country in the world to choose its president without its people, how can small nations allow its people to choose its president? Elections are always very deliberate. And we see it as a democracy and we have the right to choose our president .. This corruption the world today. We now have a difficult dream to achieve: freedom from the biggest corrupt regime. We want to have a world in which the right of humanity and the right to live are right. It became our right dream .. I wish you a good president who feels his people and loves his country .. I wish you good always my dear brother @tarazkp
DECENTRALIZE EVERYTHING DAMMIT!
UPVOTE SIR I SUPPORT
Absolutely everything. Decentralize it all! It is the solution to every problem humanity faces.
;)
A blockckain could well store the votes, it is the possible hacking or other manipulation of the votes before they reach the blockchain that could be a problem. This is also why some countries reverted to paper/pencil voting from counting machines on which a voter just pushed a button. Where there's software, there's a risk.
Is the risk higher or lower than the mess that currently goes on where large swaths of the political media coverage is around voting controversies and the like. There are always ways to manipulate but at least having it on a blockchain they are somewhat traceable.
Perhaps a one use key gets mailed to all voters prior to the election, or a text message, or bank signin numbers get used... Lots of various ways to limit gaming.
No such voting controversies in The Netherlands. Organising things well goes a long way (long opening hours for voting, vote wherever you like, many voting stations, paper record of every vote, and so on). Better to get that down pat first, then maybe try to automate. It's not as bad as all that everywhere.
Yes I know, Finalnd is relatively simple and well organised also but, it is still an expensive process that could be automated.
But if we fixed voting in this completely sensible and logical way, then we wouldn't get to have all the awesome controversies and accusations of voter fraud! That just wouldn't be any fun, now would it?
But, there is still Kanye.