alt Hacker NewsI always thought it was actually an ingenious solution to elections. There's absolutely no reason that a driver's license can't derive a hash that can only be proven and not reversed (for identity); and provides a one-time contribution to a blockchain that contains your vote - which you then receive your block's information when you finish voting.
ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes, identity is kept secret, trust is installed with hash checks for each and every voter - etc etc etc.
It's certainly more airtight than the solution we have today - where trust and efficiency can both be compromised fairly easy.
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If you want that just use zero knowledge proofs and cryptographic accumulators. No block chain needed.
Typically one of the properties people want from elections is the inability to prove to soneone how you voted, e.g. to stop someone from going, prove you voted for my candidate or i beat you up (or dont give you the bribe). Your scheme wouldn't support that.
Who validates the driver's license?
How do you stop inauthentic licenses?
Perhaps some sort of central authority?
This is the main problem with most of the blockchain/crypto issues is that its all fine until a dispute, and then we all fall back to the state to sort it out (ie the legal system)
You're describing a transparency log, which doesn't require a blockchain.
What if one doesn't have a car and a driver's license?
> identity is kept secret,
Except to anyone who sees your driver license.
There are schemes for this, but it requires much more than just a hash. You need not only asymmetric cryptography, but some sort of Zero Knowledge Proof if you don’t want to be able to identify the person who voted.
you can also juststore hashes in a normal database.
Others have shown why most of your other points are wrong or don't need blockchain, but this is also important:
> ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes
This is completely false. In fact, at the scale of a country, almost no one can actually do this. 95+% of the population doesn't have the knowledge required to do something like this and understand why it works. And while in principle they could learn to do it, they don't have the time and energy and other resources to spend on this.
And this is a deal breaker, as having the population believe and easily able to convince themselves that their elections are free is an extremely important part of democracy, especially when things are not that rosy.