Upload timestamps chunked.
I’m confident people can solve all of those problems.
Give the Tor guys some money to figure it out 
Tor doesn’t have delays because acceptable delays over 3 hops likely still are correlatable over time.
I mean it’s interesting but we’ll likely run into something I cant explain. Even the chuncked thing is a guess, ofc it would mean some work to develop this but I think it’s doable.
There are some very easy solutions to the tracing aspect. And many.
The problem is… as soon as I give you a system which 100% ensures anonymity, then I will also be able to exploit those same principles to fraud the whole system.
a simplified example of the dilema:
if I can vinculate one vote to a specific location and time, I can trace back the voter.
if I can not vinculate a vote to a location and time, then What keeps someone to injecting a bunch of additional votes into the chain?
I would also like to point out that this, if implemented across the nation, should be made available to everybody at a free cost. It would feel discriminatory against poorer Americans if they needed to sacrifice money that they could put towards food in order to gain the right to vote.
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I definitely agree. I tried to convey my fears of voter disenfranchisement in my earlier post. If you have to pay for the smart card at all then you’ll inherently exclude some groups from voting. Ultimately though, someone has to pay for it, and if it’s via taxes then low-income taxpayers will be paying for it, even if it is indirectly. Alleviating fees at the point of acquisition doesn’t mean you didn’t foot the bill.
This is partly why I suggested smart card voting may not be worth pursuing at all. Voter fraud is really not an issue in most democracies, so the only incentive would be to make it easier to vote. If this doesn’t do that, why bother?
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Because this is greater than just for voting purposes.
Universal ID is a stepping stone for so many more possibilities, inclusive of a true universal income system.
Implementing something like Blockchain based ID for voting, is ultimately only a stepping stone towards greater things.
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First electronic voting, in general, would have to be done right, as an Aussie i have no clue exactly how unprotected machines are (we still do all paper) but at least in what I’ve seen from John Oliver’s video about it
The machines are not stored in any safe way, and it is all just vaunrable. Once we can reliably use something like a voting machine, we could do universal ID, and you are right, it would be a stepping stone to some really easy voting.
Of course, it couldn’t be mandatory, as it would lose a lot of minorities and ostracised groups who may not have access to acquiring such a card. But being able to verify someone electronically can really help with speeding up wait time (as someone who has never waited longer than 10-15 minutes to vote, Americas waits are astonishing), and voting fraud.
The idea of some biometrics check too could help. maybe taking a photo of the person in the booth to have in case of stolen ID cards (and whatever else we use for people who don’t use a card) But in saying that the public needs to be educated on how they are still anonymous in this, they won’t think their vote is private anymore.
also for injecting votes if there is no stamp of time and location, couldn’t the machines have some what of a “cool down” making it pretty much redundant in trying to spam a machine full of fake votes.
I don’t know, i think it really is a multi part process that i’m not smart enough to formulate XD
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After the most recent election I heard about how the Australians have such easy access to vote. I looked up how your elections work and I gotta say, I like your system better. Preferential voting along with easy access to the voting systems and every one automatically being “registered” makes a lot more sense.
As a Brazilian, I can answer that.
For the folks who don’t know this, Brazil is (allegedly) the only country in the world with an 100% electronic voting system, where
electronic ballots have been in use since 1996.
In 2010 the electronic ballots there allow for biometry based voting as well (fingerprints).
This system does address some of the concerns I raised earlier about anonymity. And is surprisingly good and efficient…
I won’t get into technical details, but…
By storing the votes in a single machine, each voting action can have a timestamp and that can be matched against the presence of the voter in the machine site (thus avoiding vote injection. If the number and ID of votes does not match the number of votees, which is stored separately, it can be flagged).
At the same time, the votes themselves are “shuffled” inside the ballot, thus avoiding a direct connection between vote and votee (is votee even a word, btw?).
Also, the urns make advantage of an Unix style timestamp and all the votes are stored in a single location. so if anything touches that file the timestamp changes. Again allowing you to flag it when it has been tampered with.
The only big flaw in the system comes from the fact that these machines still must be transported back to the counting facilities… Which allows for people to manipulate the machine. Of course that this will leave huge fingerprints and the person responsible for receiving it will see that. (and that’s what Bribes were invented for, right?)
In US that could be controlled better. Since you have only 2 parties, you could keep the system where a member from each party must watch over it… but in Brazil we have over 35 political parties (and the number is growing), thus that is not possible.
Anyhow… Electronic voting is still flawed. but not from a technical perspective.
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Yep, and being sent a voting registration card which is simply scanned with a question or two (I honestly don’t remember, maybe address or birthday iirc). We don’t even need our ID with us practically (idk about legally though)
Also, we have early voting / not bad mail in voting, and even in normal times voting isn’t tooooo time consuming. Apart from the whole people have to count the paper ballots, I don’t really have many complaints about the Australian voting system - not including the political side of it of course.
Not true - ACT is electronic.
The source code is available after each election and before (for before, they let security researchers look and try to break it).
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oh thats cool
A really, really bad idea: when you force people who don’t want to vote to drag their asses to the polling booth, two things happen:
1/ They choose any candidate at random if they didn’t have any preference.
2/ They cast a blank ballot - or worse, choose a hateful candidate out of spite - when they specifically do not want to participate in the election and you force them to.
In countries where voting is mandatory, there is (virtually) no abstention rate. But it is a very important metric too: it’s a measure of how much people believe the election will change anything and is worth going out to vote for. It’s not the same as protest votes, because protest votes imply that those who vote believe in the system, but aren’t impressed by the choice on offer.
See I would disagree parts of this, since in America clearly turnout is an issue - sure it has its downsides, but it also means that we don’t get elections / votes like the 2016 US election and England Brexit vote where people complained if they knew what the outcome would have been, they would have voted…
Tbh, blank ballots are completely harmless,
Similar with random candidate picks if its actually random - it then adds a constant number to every party.
Regarding actually knowing candidates / choosing preferences, for our longer ballots we often have ‘above the line’ preferencing in addition to the usual number every candidate, which lets you choose a party / parties instead of candidates, and then those parties deals / preferences become yours. Those who want to just put down one number on a ballot can, and those who want to number 50+ candidates also can.
Pretty much the only reason left as to why its a bad idea is the spiteful choice - and that is an issue, but with how many votes there are, and how easy it is to just choose a party, that’s not very common.
Note that technically you can just not register to vote in the first place, however once your are registered its not hard for them to fine you if you don’t vote. Saying that, I’m not sure just how often that actually occurs.
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I think artificially hiding poor turnout by forcing people to vote is not healthy. Poor turnout should tell society or the powers that be something: either that education is lacking on the importance of civic duties, or that elections are smoke and mirrors to keep the people believing they live in a true democracy, but the people ain’t fooled and it shows because they don’t give a rat’s ass no more.
When you force people to go vote, you lose that information, is my point.
I completely agree.
Not only it is not healthy, but I cannot see how “being forced to vote” can be part of any democratic process.
In Brazil the vote is compulsory.
This leads to massive electorate farms in so many ways…
A very good example is when someone with a political agenda hires a truck and goes on the countryside bringing people to the voting pools in a fast and comfortable manner… as long as they agree to vote for his candidate!
Highly illegal, but happens all the time!
And that is only one of way too many issues to list here!
Not sure about where you are, but in the Brazilian system, that is a very dangerous missconcept.
If you void your ballot, it is harmless.
But if you cast a blank, albeit unvoided, ballot, it does count for the candidate with the higher amount of votes!
Not only this means that blank votes actually affect directly the distribution of senate seats (which are calculated based on a distribution of relative number of direct votes), but it can also mase so that a candidate which did not have majority of votes might with “with majority”.
Example:
Candidate A has 31% of all votes
Candidate B has 30% of all votes
Candidate C has 10%…
White votes make up 20% of total.
If white votes were harmless, we should have a second round between Candidates A and B. Which should be fair since they are very close, and neither has the approval of any majority.
But once you add in the white votes to Candidate A, now he counts as having 51% of all votes, which entitles him to an immediate victory. and a very misrepresented one.
Again, not true either.
When people who did not wanted to vote “pick a candidate at random” they are not truly being random. They will pick whomever had the catchiest slogan.
As a proof of that, the most voted “senator” (I actually can’t recall the proper translation for “Vereador”) in the country history was literally a “clown”, whose campaign slogan was basically “I cannot read nor write! And I have no clue what to do if I get elected, but I will become rich!”
Worst… he got so many votes that it allowed the whole party backing him to fill the senate with seats!
We have secret ballots, which means that no-one can blackmail / buy votes etc. - also I live in a country (Australia) where bribery is very uncommon. Voting is always on a Saturday, and pre-polling or mail in voting is available for those who don’t work a standard Mon-Fri schedule.
Also, the fine is $20 AUD (<$15 USD) - which is so small that even if you are caught / fined, you can just pay a small amount of money. Some people choose to do this, and I respect that decision.
Often, when voting is not compulsory there are barriers to those who are poor or marginalised - America is famous for this, with purging voter rolls, convoluted registration, voting on a Tuesday, and even voting closing early to prevent more people from voting - that does not sound like a system where you have a right to vote.
In Australia, this is not the case - a spoiled or informal ballot (which there are pretty strict but good-faith guidelines about) is not counted in the tally.
If you donkey vote (i.e. 1-x top to bottom) the ballot is randomized each election, rather than by party or by last name, so different candidates will get the donkey and reverse donkey votes each time.
Basically, it seems that its less of an issue regarding the compulsory voting itself, and more about the implementation of compulsory voting along with the general climate / cultural system of the country.
Blank ballots, and otherwise informal ballots, are counted in our statistics. The rate hovers around 5%.
You can count blank ballots. The fact is, 95% of people in Australia cast a valid ballot in an election. The political parties have to woo all voters, but not worry about getting out the vote.
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The simple answer to this is to make it one of the various options available. For example, mail in ballots require a mailing address… that is one seriously expensive thing to get. Like mail in ballots, smartcard voting would naturally only be an option for those who were in a position to take advantage of it… people with a wallet to put the card into… people with internet access… people with a computer or smartphone with NFC that can leverage it. If you are forced to travel to vote (like to a library with smartcard voting computers) then you are also able to travel to vote in person at a polling place… so really smartcard voting would only be for those who could afford it… but that’s not to say it should not be embraced. In fact, I think it would be a much faster and better system over mail in ballots… basically the advantage of mail in ballots in that you can review your candidates carefully and all the initiatives on the ballot without having to feel rushed at the booth… really dig into what each thing you’re voting on really means… but with the added advantage of instant results… no two week long counting process.
anyway just my 2 cents…
We also have secret ballots. And that does not stop people from buying votes. Exactly because voting is compulsory is that the vote buying becomes a common reality.
A person who would rather not to vote would not care that much whom it’s voting for. Therefore if someone pays them to vote for a specific candidate, why would they not?
It’s harder to buy votes when voting is optional.
Same thing in Brazil. There is a “small” fine if you don’t go to vote.
Small enough that if you have a good job you don’t mind it.
But if you are on the poorest part of the population, than you might not have dinner to pay that fine.
And that is harsh against the unpriviledged population.
Funny. All of those things also happen in Brazil.
The only difference is that the people who were prevented from voting also receive a fine on theirs heads.
Can’t see how making the vote compulsory would stop any of that.
Agree completely here.
Voting being made compulsory does not solve anything.
All it does is making the lives of people harder and removing the right from people to choose if they want to vote or not.
I mean… why on earth do I need to pay for a train to go to a ballot station, ride for 2.5 hours and then stand for 8 hours in a queue just to void my ballot because I personally and consciously refuse to back any of the candidates we have?
Besides all that, there is also the philosophical factor:
Any system that forces you to vote cannot be considered democratic, in my opinion, because since it violates the right to choose not to be represented it ceases to be a “rule by majority” and becomes an “imposition by rule” system.