Topic: Electronic Referendums with Checks and Balances (Read 4294 times)

In 'normal' elections the voter cannot prove to the buyer of the vote that they actually voted for what the buyer wanted.
However with the bitcoin system they can prove it, because of the public blockchain transaction.

when the election takes place directly, where the voters get their address, then this is removed - or has the same impact, which is in the old system, where it is also possible buy the vote from somebody upfront.

Good catch! This is one possible hole in the design. I'm not sure how big this problem is though.

People could buy/sell votes from/to eachother.
You might be able to prevent it in some way, but that would likely remove a lot of the benefits of this system.
Or do you think this isn't a problem?

Hello all,

I came up with an idea yesterday and I felt I had to scribble this down and share it with the Bitcoin community.
I also had a conversation about it with Rick Falkvinge, so giving him some cred for this as well.

Electronic Referendums
=================

Background: Governments would like to make referendums more cost efficient and secure, because counting votes is quite cumbersome and labor intensive (and error prone). However, computer experts are normally discouraging from introducing electronic referendums because of the fear of hacking and security. The security problem is two-fold: How can the government assure the voting process hasn't been tampered by hackers and how can the citizens trust that the government hasn't hijacked the voting process? So what is the answer to fool proof electronic referendums? The answer is Bitcoin (using a capital B to clarify that this is not only the currency I’m talking about, but the underlying network & technology as well). Let me explain the process in detail and why the necessary steps have been taken.

It's important that we get the checks and balances right. So let's start with the checks.

Step 1) Colored coins: As an example, in Sweden there are (approximately) 9 million citizens, so the government will prepare 9 million ballots by assigning them each a small bitcoin sum, let's say the equivalent of 10 cents. All these are routed through a specific address which the government owns. This process is known as coloring. Anyone checking the blockchain can check that these ballots are valid if the government announces its public key. This enables the citizens to check that the number of ballots is in accordance with the number of citizens. The reason for coloring the coins is to ensure we can discount "uncolored" coins being spent on the addresses mentioned in step 3.

Step 2) Distributing colored coins: The next problem is how to distribute these ballots. In order for the checks and balances to be correct we need to ensure that the government should not know which ballot goes to which citizen (so the government can’t track the citizen’s casted vote). To solve this problem I suggest that during a suitable time frame there are ballot pickup stations. The government checks the personal id of the citizen, and the citizen withdraws a random ballot from a basket (this will be one of the "colored" bitcoins in step 1). The citizen’s id is required so the government can add a check mark to prevent the citizen from withdrawing more than one ballot.

Step 3) Casting your vote: To vote for a specific party, or issue, you will spend your colored bitcoin on one of a preselected set of bitcoin addresses announced by the government. Each bitcoin address is representing a specific political party (or issue). In Sweden it is also allowed to scribble down free text on a note (e.g. “Mickey Mouse Party”), so to solve this problem we could use the free message that can be associated with a bitcoin transaction and then have an "other" bitcoin address (to represent this category).

Step 4) Counting votes: By sending these colored bitcoins through the Bitcoin network we can easily count the votes by checking the blockchain. This is done for both checks and balances. The government can check how many votes were casted by checking the number of colored bitcoins for each bitcoin address representing a political party/issue. But more importantly, the citizens can double check this counting to ensure that the number of the colored coins is matching the number of citizens.

Some concluding remarks:

a) The hashing power of the network (where Bitcoin is the largest one by far) will ensure that the process is not counterfeited and can be trusted. The double spending problem (that Bitcoin solves) ensures that each vote is casted exactly once. The anonymity of the casting process is also ensured by step 2. Here we can see the true power of pseudo anonymity of the Bitcoin network.

b) We can't use something other than Bitcoin for this, because we need that independent hashing power to ensure the voting process is correct; both the government and the people should trust the system. There's no point for the government to build their own blockchain, because that cannot be trusted by the people (especially in weak democracies). Thus, Bitcoin (or any other large enough alt-coin) is the only network that can be trusted.

c) To ensure the votes are willingly put into the blockchain by the miners we'll have to almost make the 10 cents (each ballot) become the volunteered transaction fee. Although the cost of voting will go up (9 million citizens times 10 cents = the equivalent of $900000 dollars), that sum is minuscule in comparison with how much time, energy and money that is spent today on an election day.

d) There's no need to cast all the votes on the same day, but the ballot pickup stations (described in step 2) could open from a specific date and then the election process is open through until a specific closing date. At that date the votes are counted in the blockchain; both by the government and by independent representatives of the people.

So that's how the electronic referendums can be done with all the checks and balances in place. Therefore, this is another case on how Bitcoin can improve democracy and why it will change the society, even more than Internet itself.

If you liked this you can always donate to: 13gRyzrNoEi1AbAJ6LXZCJytg9L8YmE7Kb