How do you propose to detect fraudulent votes? An account with 250k might vote, and then delegate or transfer that SP to another account and be able to vote again. What about folks selling their votes? Will that be considered fraud? If so, how do you propose detecting such fraud?
Thanks!
Edit: I also regard your exclusion of those blacklisted as unacceptable. There are many, many folks that have run afoul of the users running blacklists for reasons unrelated to fraud. Personal antipathy is rampant, and is not an acceptable reason to exclude folks from standing for election.
Folks that have been blacklisted for fraud will certainly have their history on the blockchain examined by voters prior to election. There is no reason to exclude them unless you fear that supporters of fraud possess nominal SP to elect them to office.
If that is the case, Steemalliance is already doomed anyway.
In the interest of fairness and open government, I call upon you to rescind the ineligibility of blacklisted accounts from standing for election. Otherwise you face the prospect of what has long been apparent in American electoral politics: all candidates eligible for election are those captive to powers behind the scenes, none of whom will undertake their office with integrity.
If a whale wanted to split their stake they'd have to power down. With the current divestment schedule, that's not possible or likely to happen in time to make a difference in the elections. It is highly unlikely someone would go to those extremes.
All votes will be scrutinized. If the anti-abuse community can find most scam rings then voting fraud attempts will be found just as easily. The penalty is pretty serious and its best to not even attempt any sort of dishonesty.
Users who are blacklisted should apply for an appeal if they want to participate. That's why only the Steemcleaners blacklist is used. It's a blacklist with due process and any person who isn't on it for fraud or something equally serious such as theft through hacking will have a chance (for example, someone who is on for a failed verification, which they can easily resolve within minutes). At the end of the day this is a legal entity and the persons elected must be trustworthy. Someone who was caught for identity theft, for example, is not the right person to represent Steem. I seriously doubt this will come up and if it does then we'll inform the public.
While I agree most voters will look into who they're voting for, we can't expect every voter to spend days going over every transaction of a candidate, particularly if they don't know them well.
This isn't a paid role and it can't be used for any sort of self-promotion or personal profit. I expect we'll see dedicated persons who are genuinely interested in Steem applying for it.
I know we'll see plenty of good folks that want to be as useful as can be to Steem seeking these positions. I fear we'll also see, as we do IRL, minions, easily influenced but well meaning folks, and outright profiteers put forward and, due to the Sybilline potential of botnets, nefarious characters seeking to put them in positions they believe will profit them.
I'm far less concerned about an account blacklisted for malicious acts directly seeking these positions than I am those folks using accounts that are not known to be associated with them to do so, or, what I consider most likely from how these things are done in the real world, simply backing someone they can count on for the position.
There seems to be little that can be done about that IRL, and it doesn't seem any easier on Steem. I don't expect many folks blacklisted by Steemcleaners to seek these positions, but I hope if any do the folks running the election carefully consider all relevant matters before deciding one way or another whether they can stand for election. I am absolutely sure the folks I know that are filling those positions now are very dedicated, diligent, and thoughtful people, and if they're handling it, they'll exceed my expectations.
They always do.
Thanks!
Couldn't have said it better myself. I 100% agree with you.
Even if we could negate vote fraud, which is impossible in a decentralized and mostly anonymous financial network, what's next? A budget (ever-increasing, of course) for the council? Taxation (also ever-increasing) to pay for the budget? Welfare and universal income?
Once you have formal institutions with budgets to spend the administrators of the institutions discover they can get kickbacks, and then the budgets grow and grow. I hope it doesn't happen on Steem, but it's a faint hope.
I have actually proposed something similar to a universal income, in the Huey Long algorithm. It's just recognizing that non-bot posts that aren't spam or a scam of some kind deserve something, and no post deserves hundreds of Steem now that we pay 10% as a tax to support developers. Huey Long proposed back in the Great Depression that no one be paid less than 3% of the median income, and no one be paid more than 300% of the median.
I reckon applying that algorithm to Steem author rewards encourages newbs, who can actually get nothing today on posts, and eliminates financially manipulating the rewards mechanism by stake weighting, since 300% of the median post payout isn't enough to make it worth stealing. It makes a lot more sense on Steem than it does IRL TBQH. The median payout is around .06 SBD presently and thrice that just isn't worth the effort to setup circle jerks, buy botvotes, or self vote, which drives folks seeking return on investment to push up the price of Steem to attain capital gains for their ROI, which is good for everyone.
No. None of those will ever happen and it's completely absurd to think that anyone here will ever allow them to happen. We're here to build a good Steem Foundation for the benefit of the community, not run some insane socialist state.