alt Hacker NewsOthers 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.
Replies
>"Others have shown why most of your other points are wrong or don't need blockchain"
Answered them. Introducing 0 knowledge proofs was a good point but blockchain can still be a medium to utilize these possibilities. I don't believe a conventional database or transparency log can meaningfully substitute the decentralized nature of blockchain for such an operation, though; and I said as much in my replies.
>"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."
Why can't I apply this logic to current election systems? You can memorize and regurgitate a usa.gov or National Archives article to articulate it - but 95% of the populace doesn't actually know about those ballot counts, ballot transportation, result tallying, transmission and communication of said results, implications of Independent State Legislature Theory and how challenging it - at least on originalist grounds - can cause 50 different processes for each of the 50 different states, etc etc etc.
There is no more wasted time, energy, or blind trust than in the current system, and at least introducing zero knowledge proofs, blockchain (or another system) and cryptography to the electoral system can be rooted in the pragmatic AND be abstracted to a layman from any given savvy person, of which there's many. Even in the long term. As it its, it's not like independent researchers or cryptography nerds haven't called out institutional-wide folly; it's what happened with Dual_EC_DRBG, and was promptly laughed out the door for any serious cryptographer and highly publicized.
As for the rest, it's well known that the data is collected and retained on voter information as it is. We're seeing states like Colorado, just this past week, deny giving the current federal administration voter data from the previous election. You can reasonably predict roughly half of America's voting anyway; when their timeline of party affiliation AND the knowledge of whether they voted or not is already public information.
In the current election system also almost no one can do anything to verify the results. The percentage is way higher than 95%. There are many arguments against electronic voting but the current system is terrible and insecure.
>>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.
And it's currently not the case at all.
I think blockchain is a terrible idea for about anything. Electronic voting is hard. Voting is hard. It doesn't change the fact that the current system is a complete security joke .