Topic: Is Blockchain System Capable of Creating Fair Elections? (Read 634 times)

Yes, that works. I read somewhere else about voting with the help of Blockchain. Less corruption, more trust, more anonymity and less paperwork brings the blockchain election.
It works in the way of Bitcoin, every resident obtains one token where he/she can redeem for one vote. Thanks to the fast technology, all results are immediately publicly available for the residents and counting votes belong to the past. Although it sounds good, the way is quite far away from this technology because no govt would invest sums in this technology and continue with the traditional system.

David Chaum has done extensive academic work on the use of cryptography for elections. See here [PDF] and here, for example. The blockchain could absolutely be used as a distributed root-of-trust for a Chaumian digital election system.

Well bitcoin is only anonimized to a certain degree.

In bitcoin you have 2 keys (private and public key). When you generate a transaction you use your private key to generate signature for your transaction and attach your public key so anyone can check if your signature is valid. Anyone can easily check if signature is valid using your public key but nobody can forge signature for any other message unless they have your private key as well. This way you can always easily prove that you are in fact the owner of certain bitcoin address just by signing arbitrary message with your private key, but nobody can tell who's message whos in blockchain unless they provide proof (in form of cryptographic signature).  

In the blockchain elections anyone will be able to see public keys but not the person's name or info of course. So what everyone will see at the end of elections is PublicKey1 voted for Trump, PublicKey2 voted for Hillary and so on. But since you know your private key you can easily reveal to anyone that "PublicKey1 voted for Trump" is indeed your vote - all you need to do is to sign something with your private key. Like a bitcoin those elections won't be truly anonimous, but only anonimous unless you want to reveal your vote. No matter if it will use biometrics or otherwise - in case of public blockchains owner of private key (your fingerprint pattern or pupil scan) will be able to generate proof of vote. It is same as if ballot paper had hash of your social security number on it - it's a unique ID linked to you even though it looks nothing like your number.

Real vote should be provable anonimous.  I.e. in the end there should be a pile of papers that say "vote for Trump" and nothing else. Nobody should be able to distinguish who's vote it is - even the one who casts it.

Ok bro.  I thought voting would be anonymized like transactions on Bitcoin Blockchain are... i get you thought!
Someone suggested using Biometric ID for Blockchain Voting & I think it makes sense. I guess it would eliminate the need to reveal who you vote for( like the "I voted for Trump" signing example). Whoever you vote for will be linked to your biometrics id and kept anonymous.

Fair voting system means that Nobody suppose to know for sure who you vote for. And you should be unable to prove that you have voted for certain party. I.e. you can tell your friends you voted for Hillary but there is no way you can prove it (unless you took video of you voting). You can lie or be honest and there is no way to know. In blockchain you can't lie because by voting you create cryptographic proof that you have voted for Trump. If you want, you can produce this proof to anyone asking who you voted for by signing arbitrary message with your private key.

I'l give you an example of how I envision digital vote:

You have a private key that associated with you and this key can sign your transactions (votes). So to cast a vote you sign an immutable message saying (I, owner of this public key, vote for Trump), then broadcast it all over the network for everyone to see and verify that this is a real vote. And everyone does the same. Then the election closes, everyone can check the blockchain and count all the votes. And it sounds really fair because votes can't suddenly appear, nobody can create votes out of thin air and behind every vote there is a real human who got his unique private key, known only to him.

Now what do I do to abuse this system? I will come to you and tell you "wanna earn easy 100$? Here is a smart contract - cast your vote for Trump, and as soon as your vote shows up in blockchain you'll automatically get 0,3 ETH". You don't know this guy, but you can easily see he can't possibly scam you. And now you have strong motivation to sell your vote, because there exists mechanism to easily and automatically prove that you indeed have voted for Trump. Worst of all - nobody can track the guy who pays you for the vote, and it is very hard to distingwish between those who sold their vote in this manner and those who honestly voted for Trump.

Real life paper vote selling is quite different - it requires you to make a photo/video of your ballot paper (i.e. create a proof that you commited crime of selling vote). So to cast a vote in current system you either have to play fair, or create evidence of fraud that can potentially lead to your being punished.  

"Now let's assume your transaction is a vote - looks fine, right? a fair votes that easy to count and above all it's immutable? However this fundamental propery makes it very easy to sell your vote i.e. you can easily prove that you have voted for certain party."



Hello bro, would you mind explaining the above (colored and bolded) post? I have read and re- read the comment, still can't understand the message you trying to pass across. Are you saying people aren't supposed to know the parties that others vote for?

Still it will be pretty easy to sell the vote if you like. I.e. after voting you would be able to provide proof that you voted for certain party. This is the main problem in my oppinion.

The Blockchain can help to control ballot papers. Once it is entered, it cannot be removed or destroyed. So let's say you allocate a number to each ballot paper and you enter them after it was counted, then nobody can throw away ballot papers. The numbers has to add up in the end, even if they were not used.

Someone cannot print some extra ballot papers and add them to the total that were used. You will have to supervise the data capturers or automate the process. Let's say each number is represented with a QR code, then it could be scanned and added to the Blockchain automatically as you exit the voting station or even when you drop it in the box.

Current state of blockchain is very bad idea as a platform for fair elections. You see fundamentally blockchain works like this:
You make a transaction and whole world sees it and can confirm that this transaction took place and you can prove that you performed this transaction.

Now let's assume your transaction is a vote - looks fine, right? a fair votes that easy to count and above all it's immutable? However this fundamental propery makes it very easy to sell your vote i.e. you can easily prove that you have voted for certain party. For voting system a very different system have to be crafted - one that allows you to cast a vote (send the transaction) but in such a way that AFTER you sent the transaction nobody (even you) can prove where it was sent (so you can't prove you have voted for certain party) to elliminate any possibility to sell the vote. There is no blockchain that capable of doing so (even ZCash can't do it).

What do you guys mean by elections

If there is anything I want something I so much hoped for the block chain to used for, its the use of it for elections because this part especially in countries where there are cases of election malpractices even in the United States not to talk of several African countries that free and fair elections is an expensive product.

But for now, I don't see it happening anytime soon because electoral bodies where there these are needed seems not to be moving towards technological advancement while the citizens where it is mostly needed are still in past with several ignorance about what Blockchain is all about.

Hey guys,

I'm really hopeful about the future of Bitcoin and Blockchain system; but I'm curious about one thing. Is Blockchain capable of creating fair elections? If we can achieve that goal, that will be the biggest and most sensational  innovation of Bitcoin and Blockchain for the world and humanity! What do you think about it?