Hacker News Reader

Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

haha that was actually my first thought.

The whole cryptocurrency stuff seems pretty shady but there are select applications where blockchain is ideally suited & this seems like one of them.

i.e. All those independent election monitors can set up their own node etc

View on HN

Stop thinking like an engineer.

The most important feature of elections is that everyone in society can take part of the process, understand the process, and (locally) verify that the elections are fair.

Technology just introduces black boxes that citizens are somehow expected to trust, because something something cryptography something blockchain.

No, that's not good enough.

>Technology just introduces black boxes that citizens are somehow expected to trust

oh please. People trust the lock sign on HTTPS all day without understanding it. (or mastercard or the bridge they drive over or well anything).

Avoiding superior technological solutions just because the man on the street doesn't understand them is a bad approach. If society did that we'd still be in the 1800s.

> oh please. People trust the lock sign on HTTPS all day without understanding it

Yes, and the internet is an absolute cesspool when it comes to security. Do we really want to hold up the internet as a shining success that we should be applying to probably the most important institution we have?

The understanding is an important part of voting, not in general use of technology and the parent did mention this:

> The most important feature of elections

People don't trust the lock sign on HTTPS. They don't know what it means. That's OK for some website, things work anyway.

If an election goes against you and you don't clearly understand and trust the voting mechanism, you're not going to vote next time because why bother? It's all rigged anyway.

And people are quite OK to trust these. In these cases there is a central authority from which trust can be established. Voting is the opposite. During voting the central authority is being changed by the man on the street. He therefore needs to understand how it works otherwise how is he in control?

The needs of a voting system are challenging - you need to identify voters so people don't vote multiple times (and aren't deceased Illinois residents...) yet you need to assure people that their vote is anonymous, so there aren't repercussions for voting for unpopular candidates/initiatives.

Blockchain helps with the first, but does not with the latter.

> i.e. All those independent election monitors can set up their own node etc

Do you trust the OS? The silicon? The PCB layout? The firmware? What about the firmware in all those other components? Could you verify all that if you are concerned that something is weird?

Pencil and paper are trivial to verify for every layman (with basic literacy), computers are not.

That possibility of verification is kind of a big deal when it comes to deciding in huge groups, and the block chain (or any modern tech so far) doesn't improve anything about it.

People were freaking out over possible Russian influence in the last election - wait until they find out the voting machine company had the equipment made in China.

Currently, a conversation about voting machines with the government / a politician is likely to go something like this:

You: "I support electronic voting machines that uses <some foolproof blockchain system>."

Politician: "You will be happy to hear that I too support electronic voting and you will be happy to hear we will be buying some electronic voting machines that run proprietary software on Windows XP with Norton Anti-Virus! Thanks for your support!"

You: "That's not what I..."

Politician: "Thanks again!" <Ends discussion.>

I'm not confidence our current education level and political environment can navigate the subtle distinction between "verifiable blockchain system" and "proprietary software on Windows XP".

Or maybe they do use a fool proof system for several years. Everyone gets accustomed to trusting the trustworthy algorithm. Then they change things, they say "here's a new proprietary algorithm, it will save taxes and protect children". 99% of the population doesn't understand what's different, so they continue to support the new proprietary algorithm, because "the voting machines still look the same". The few who know better are ignored.

Or maybe worse: flaws are discovered in the system and they don't change in response. That's the slow moving ship of government IT.

> ideally suited & this seems like one of them

How so? What are the actual mechanics of how a blockchain would be used in this situation?

What is a "transaction" here -- what information would be stored? What would a node represent (and why does that data need to be part of a chain)? Who are the peers/clients -- how would the data be added to the chain?

Most importantly, what does the added complexity get us, over boxes of paper ballots?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com