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Comment by dpacmittal | Hacker News Reader

I think blockchain is a perfect application for voting machines. Blockchain is public, immutable, cryptographic. Every voter can vote and then verify their vote was actually registered and was untampered via a web platform or something.

The network can be run by the public. Ofcourse there is risk associated with the 51% attack, but it's still a more transparent process than what we have today.

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Making everyone's voting record public is just about the worst possible idea for a voting system.

Secret ballot is a feature, not a bug. It protects you from coercion and retaliation.

The wallet owner is secret, but can be checked by the owner and by the government

So the government knows what you voted? Great.

You must not be able to prove who you voted for. Otherwise you are still at risk of retaliation, coercion and can sell your vote. For the very same reasons the government must not be able to know who you voted for either.

Secret paper ballots really deserve more credit. The tech might be old but it gets the essential features right.

Using a system like ZCash the government could have citizens register a public address, then 1 token is distributed to each public address, votes work by sending the token to the candidate you vote for, whomever has the highest balance at the end of the election is the electee (this even allows for off ballot candidates, but up to rules). ZCash is designed so that you can't tell the contents of a transaction despite it being immutably on the blockchain

Another important property of voting systems is that you can't prove who you voted for, so that you can't be forced or paid to vote for someone. A blockchain based solution, even like ZCash does not fulfil this.

You can prove who you voted for by taking a picture of your ballot when you vote. Some thug could rough you up if you can't provide a selfie of your ballot being marked for some candidate

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