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Discussion on: Designing A Voting System For 1 Billion on the Blockchain (Part 2) - How To Keep A Secret

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

I asked why should we in the first place give up the paper trail that is a proven, simple, robust, transparent technology for any kind of software based solution that is by default the contrary of all that?
"I don't like it because it's not a cutting edge technology" is a terrible reason.
"It needs too much manual labor" or "it's costly" is a pretty bad reason at least in the context I know of democratic elections in a developed country. Yes it is, but that's a small price to pay to have a working democracy.

Polemical example: bad software based voting solutions played a role in the infamous Florida 2000 election that tipped the US presidency to George W Bush against the candidate that had more votes. We will never know which role they played exactly (and that's a problem!) but from the cost of the useless Iraq War alone (1600 billions according to the Congressional budget office), you can understand very clearly that sparing money there is stupidity on an epic scale!

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theoutlander profile image
Nick Karnik

Are you aware of the magnitude of corruption in the US at voting booths? And, how people are suppressed throughout the entire process? That's all a result of this convoluted and outdated process using paper.

All the reasons the OP has mentioned are valid in many countries including the US. Mailed-in ballots get lost all the time. More than often, they're not even counted. There's no way to trace back and know if someone's vote was counted. There's so much corruption in that process. So, this is absolutely the right technology to explore solving these problems.

Besides, with the right technological approach, we will be able to vote from the comfort of our homes in the future and get more precise and quicker results. How many people are involved in manually counting those votes? Using paper is not a small price to pay. On the contrary, it is a huge price to pay. It costs countries their democracy and brings the wrong people in power.

Shouldn't we be using technology to advance humanity? Look at countries like Estonia which are completely digitized and are also working with the govt. in some states to implement Blockchain based solutions in the US.

How can you even compare a blockchain based system to a hackable client-server application from 20 years ago which has been used over and over for the past few years? They're not the same thing. This is the future and it's designed to address these issues.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

I am not impressed by your "this is the future" mantra.

I don't know the US voting booths (not from there!), but if they are bad, it's because powerful interests don't want this problem to be fixed, not because of a problem inherent to the technology called paper.

You can ask the relevant international organizations: "How do I ensure fair elections where any significant fraud attempts would be easily detected?" and they will tell you exactly how to do that. Has been done hundreds of times. The problems are known and the solutions are known as well.

Now you can ask security experts "How do I ensure that the software is doing exactly what it claims to be doing, and that everybody understands it?"
And the answer will be:

"lol!"