In my view the voting procedure must allow members to verify two things:
a) check that your own vote is correct
b) check that other votes come from legit members
(then those members can verify that their vote is correct on their own)
So I thought that the following approach might solve the problem:
Each vote needs to include a signed message from the Bitcoin address used to pay the membership fee to a fixed known BF address. Then the whole registry of these messages with their respective addresses can be made public so that each member can (a) check that his vote is correct and (b) that other votes originate from the addresses that paid the membership fee. This will prevent BF from creating phony members just to rig the voting.
Before this is teared apart... this approach implies the changes to the procedure of paying membership fees. It needs to come from a single Bitcoin address preferably never used for anything else.
Member would need to register that address with his profile and BF would need to use a single public address for collecting fees, while identifying its members payments by the originating address they registered.
...
RE: voting:
Great ideas! I think I'll be pushing to start with a good old-fashioned "send you a letter with a PIN number to your mailing address" as the first step to preventing voter fraud. We'll have to have a much more extensive discussion of voting procedures before it is time to vote. I'll probably push to follow the lead of other successful organizations, and to do the Simplest Possible Thing That Will Work-- which might be hiring a disinterested high-reputation company who specializes in running elections for organizations.
Thanks for looking into this!
I don't see how "sending a letter with a PIN" would help address point (b) in my quote above.
Also it might not be the best way to look into the past or at other "successful" organizations or hiring a "trusted" third party (please please don't hire Diebold) for handling voting as the best solution might not have existed before advent of Bitcoin.
As an example the online gambling industry is now moving for the first time towards 'provably-fair' gambling:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/08/31/bitzino-and-the-dawn-of-provably-fair-casino-gaming/I believe there is a great opportunity here for Bitcoin Foundation to become a first successful organization in setting a precedent for 'provably-fair' voting and showing the rest of the world how voting should have been done in the first place. Please don't underestimate the importance of it.
I'm certain that Bitcoin won't only prove to be a base for future monetary systems but will become a potent tool for direct democracy where people vote for underlying principles of their society with their hash power and/or cryptographically signed messages. Thus 'provably-fair' voting is going to be a crucial part of that future.
