[jaredklewis]

Aren’t many of these problems amenable to solutions with asymetric cryptography? I.e people signing their votes with a key and the vote only be decryptable by a multi-part key, with the various parts being disrrinuted between the major parties and media.

Of course this has its own set of tradeoffs, but so does our current system.

[beat]

First, why? What problem does this actually solve, other than the technical daring-do of it all? This can all be done easily with paper (see my post about Minnesota's process).

Second, it violates the principle of a secret ballot. Repudiation would require voters to reveal who they voted for, to match ballot to (digital) signature. So it's not viable as a mechanism for a global recount.

[d0lph]

The ideal e-voting program/platform would increase security and verifiability. Right now I don't know if my vote has been tampered with.

The secret ballot could be reproduced a number of ways, but I'm particularly fond of the idea you have an extra password that makes it look like your vote was different, and only your password shows you who you really voted for.

[beat]

The solution to every security problem is more complexity.

And, in a well designed paper voting system, you do know your vote was not tampered with, because nobody's votes were tampered with.

There are only three mechanisms for tampering with the actual vote count - adding ballots, removing ballots, or altering the content of ballots. (Replacing ballots is a combined add/remove.) The blockchain mechanism only checks for alteration/removal, and only for a single vote. One individual can verify their own ballot, but repudiation requires breaking secrecy. It's simply not a very good solution.

And the reason it's not a good solution is philosophical - it's focused on the individual, when the election is about the collective. Any effective election validation system must validate the collective, not just the individual. The collective is validated by insuring that no tampering happened anywhere. And if we can demonstrate that, then verification/repudiation of individual ballots is irrelevant. If A is true for all B, and C is a B, then A is true for C.

But when you really love your hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Blockchain is basically useless for elections, but people obsess over it anyway.

[d0lph]

How do you know nobody's vote was tampered with?

[beat]

Because the process is well designed. No single person or single party was left alone with ballots, marked or unmarked, at any point. Any counting machines get spot-checked. Any count discrepancies from voter rolls to ballots cast trigger manual counts. Packages of blank ballots are sealed. Voting machines are locked, so no one can easily get into them to add/remove/replace ballots without the key(s). Used ballots are sealed at the end of the election. Signed chains of custody for everything. Etc.

[d0lph]

Collusion among multiple persons would break that, whereas a verifiable distributed system would be unaffected.