Blockchain voting?

[rslade]

The US postal service has filed a patent on a blockchain voting method.

Bruce Schneier has pointed at some of the pieces noting that this is an at best stupid, and at worst dangerous, idea.

Repeat after me: blockchain is not the answer.

[TomasP]

Agreed 100% (I don't think many in this community will back blockchain for voting).
In my view tech can help with counting/auditing votes but when casting it adds more problems than it solves.

[CraginS]

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@rslade wrote:

...

Repeat after me: blockchain is not the answer.

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Blockchain is not the answer.

Craig

[tmekelburg1]

This reminds of a podcast I recently listened to called Solvable: Election Security is (mostly) Solvable. Malcolm Gladwell interviews Bruce Schneier and basically said it's a simple process to solve if we stop worrying about trying to make voting private.

Thoughts?

Would you be comfortable with others knowing how you voted?

Could it be used against you?

[TomasP]

I don't think a "public" vote is ever acceptable. Can get dangerous, retaliatory, etc.
For example, I'm not from the US but with tensions already high I don't think a list of who voted republican or democrat would help, it would only put targets on people's backs.

[rslade]

> tmekelburg1 (Contributor I) posted a new reply in Industry News on 09-15-2020

>   Would you be comfortable with others
> knowing how you voted?

Me, personally? Yeah, but I'm not really personally invested in my own privacy,
since I have a massive awareness of my own insignificance.

> Could it be used against you?

Oh, absolutely. If anyone cared.

(Interesting coincidence, this. My next research project/presentation is on
differential privacy, and there are a lot of cross-overs ...)

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[GerryS]

blockchain is not the answer

I can see any type of public voting being used against you, potential for a lot of intimidation and intended and unintended consequences.

[tmekelburg1]

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@GerryS wrote:

blockchain is not the answer

I can see any type of public voting being used against you, potential for a lot of intimidation and intended and unintended consequences.

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I can see it used against us as well but to be fair so can social media posts and other various things we post about ourselves online. It will be just another thing we lookup before we decide to interview Candidates lol (I kid of course but you know some hiring managers will want to know before the interview).