[EGreg]

That's silly. Do you need to use paper and pencil to do banking? If we as a society and individually can trust our money to technology then why not voting?

Having a merkle tree and voting from your device instead of a polling station is not just more convenient - it's more secure too. Everyone can verify their vote was counted!!

And right now? Right now we have a government database of who voted for what. That's crazy.

[BurningFrog]

With electronic banking I can verify that my money are where they should be.

With electronic voting, I can't be sure my vote got counted, and even less sure others weren't tampered with.

[EugeneAZ]

That's right.

And now do both things _publicly_! For money (or others things you own) you will need a Torrens-like title system with a replicated database among your fellow-citizens. For voting - it will be a database replicated on DVDs (or something that can be read, say, by a microscope:)

You may be astonished how secure that will be.

[_joel]

How do you verify the entities that are registered on the chain are who they are supposed to be? It may show a commit log of Citizen X voted in a certain way, but how do you verify it was Citizen X that actually voted or that they even exist?

[EugeneAZ]

The same way as you supposed (not:) to check it under a paper-ballots voting system. By the Citizens Database - when every citizen's biometric data (photos, eye or ear scans, body measurements, etc.) and contact data is published on holographic discs, magnetic tapes (IBM has one with 330 TB storage). It will allow anyone to verify there are no fake identities there. One may store just a hash table for all entries, if he can't afford those storage mediums.

Have they told you about it?

[_joel]

I'm sorry but I'm having difficulty understanding what you're trying to say. You still need a body to oversee adding entries, otherwise anyone could add anything? How do you verify exactly, you've just got a bunch of data, which may or may not be legitimate. It still boils down to the best way to protect voting, isn't by the more exotic systems whereby fudging can be done at scale. It's by making the exploits not scale and keeping anonymity by having another process for voter registration.

I'm not sure what the choice of media has to do with anything.

Who has told me what about what now?

[EGreg]

No one requires these biometrics to make bank transactions. The bank can give you a simple security device, but with smartphones even that is optional now.

Biometrics, seriously?

Biometrics are only a one-time proof when eg you are issued a token. They can be replayed later and can't be used anywhere except where there's a physical security guard preventing tampering. And even then you trust the security guard.

[EGreg]

The same way you verify that the person using the banking app is the one they are supposed to be. Or any other service.

Obviously you use your device, and you can lock it with a password. You can use two factor authentication.

It's straightforward, really. You sound like identity has never been solved electronically.

If anything, holding a physical paper id document is far less secure than a personal device with your private keys in the Secure Enclave.

[_joel]

It's not been solved though, at least here in the UK where people are against mandatory ID cards.

[EGreg]

That's a separate issue. Why would you want to allow voting without any ID?

[EGreg]

Sure you can. If you signed your vote and all votes got included in a markle tree then you can for sure verify that your vote is counted.

Imagine bitcoin but with votes instead of transactions. Boom.

[BurningFrog]

I don't know the technology, but I assume that system could be built.

The bad part about that is that if I can validate my vote after the fact, someone else can also demand to see what I voted for, and that opens the door for vote buying, intimidation etc.

[EGreg]

No, not at all. You can vote anonymously and verify your vote but no one else can map that back to your identity.

As for rubber hose crypanalysis, that is possible now.

Buying votes is already done.

[BurningFrog]

You can buy the promise of a vote now, but it can't be verified on the individual level. On the precinct level you can, and that happens.