42
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
you could be given a randomly generated GUID which can identify your vote, but cannot be reversed engineered to identify you, unless you tell someone else what your vote GUID
This seems absurd to me, ...
- 1,192
30
votes
Accepted
Name of a voting system where you can transfer your vote to anyone at any time
What you're describing sounds like a form of liquid democracy - described by Blum & Zuber (2016)1 as:
a procedure for collective decision-making that combines direct
democratic participation with ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
25
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
No, it's not possible.
At least, not without violating multiple fundamental principles of democracy or making it seriously vulnerable. This is primarily because of the authenticity vs. voter anonymity ...
- 783
19
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
The security issues in electronic voting are completely unlike any security issues anywhere else.
You have to provide assurance that every legal vote has been correctly recorded and added to the total ...
- 20.7k
11
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
The whole field of electronic voting is rather dubious in general. Many places outperform US vote counting speed using paper ballots and without the added concern, whether justified or only perceived,...
11
votes
Accepted
Why hasn't Estonia discontinued e-voting?
E-Estonia
Estonia has invested heavily in internet infrastructure in a set of policies called E-Estonia. As part of this, Estonia has declared internet access a human right and strongly emphasizes ...
- 23.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Drawbacks of Online Voting
One of the main problems is that in most countries voting is anonymous. It's hard to find a way that people can vote online, without authentication (because anyone can only vote 1 time) and assure ...
- 216
10
votes
New trend of blaming the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) after losing the elections
Suspicion of electronic vote tampering is widespread, and those suspicions are reasonable, if perhaps not immediately validated by recorded incidents (that I am aware of).
The history of election ...
- 214
10
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
Traceability at an individual vote cast level is basically a useless feature.
The reason you want some means to audit whether a vote has been recorded properly is to determine if a vote total is ...
- 73k
7
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
Possibly
It all depends on the protocol. Luke Briggs' answer does a great job of stating the requirements for such a protocol and shows a protocol that wouldn't work. The question is whether there is ...
- 5,670
7
votes
What challenges remain for online voting?
There's no practical way to solve the problem of client security
The root problem for electronic voting is accuracy. To borrow a design law of online gaming clients by Raph Koster
Never put anything ...
- 45.6k
6
votes
Accepted
Is this a good way to count Single Transferable Vote ballots?
I think the fact that you never eliminate candidates could be a problem - in same cases you won't even get a result.
Let's say you have 10 candidates trying for 5 slots, and 1000 votes. Each ...
- 2,346
6
votes
Is this a good way to count Single Transferable Vote ballots?
The biggest problem that I see with this is that it is possible to get different results in a recount. So I would never recommend it for a government election. You'd have politicians trying to game ...
- 89.3k
6
votes
What is the benefit of electronic voting machines (as opposed to paper ballots)?
In the Presidential election of 2000 (Bush v. Gore), the election was so close that it was decided by less than 600 votes in Florida out of a voting pool of tens of millions.
Enter: the hanging ...
- 17.2k
5
votes
What sort of evidence might Wisconsin require to NOT use a machine recount?
The Wisconsin Elections Commission did publish a Recount Manual for the 2016 Presidential Election.
The basis for requesting a recount:
The basis for requesting the recount. This can consist of a ...
- 46.5k
5
votes
Drawbacks of Online Voting
The main two problems are security-related.
Auditability
Auditability (that is, the ability to recount votes when results get challenged) is the most important problem by far for elections that ...
- 30.5k
5
votes
Have any countries used blockchain voting in elections?
Sort of. There have been a few trials, the most prominent of which was the usage by the state of West Virginia in the 2018 midterm elections, which saw 144 overseas voters vote using a phone app which ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
4
votes
Is this a good way to count Single Transferable Vote ballots?
One key feature of elections is trust in the counting method. Which makes choosing your own system a bit of an issue - not least given the flaws people are picking up on.
There are bodies (such as ...
- 1,324
4
votes
Why isn't congress helping in upgrading Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs)?
First, voting methods, such as EVM are primarily a state and local function rather than a federal function, although federal regulation and funding are permitted.
Second, the current administration ...
- 73k
4
votes
Accepted
What is the benefit of electronic voting machines (as opposed to paper ballots)?
One factor that hasn't been explained is the number of elections happening at the same time. Many European countries (Germany very much included) hold one or two elections per year (with a phased ...
- 30.5k
4
votes
What could be an appropriate electoral system, when some of the alternatives are similar to each other?
The phenomenon you're describing is often called the spoiler effect, where similar candidates in a plurality based race end up impeding each other. One common measure of whether a voting system is ...
- 21.1k
4
votes
Accepted
Is The 68.05% Error Rate In The Antrim County Tabulation Totals Indicative of Machine Error?
First point, the 68.05% number is sloppy, if not completely specious. The author notes that there were "15,676 individual events" recorded in the tabulation log, but doesn't specify what an ...
- 67.7k
3
votes
Is it possible to use blockchain or public ledgers for voting?
In addition to the above answers, blockchain and public ledgers can be combined with mail-in voting to create a better mail-in voting system. The USPS is filing a patent for a blockchain system that ...
- 6,254
3
votes
Does the release of real-time voting results affect voter behaviour?
There is a fairly large body of research on the effects of polling on elections — including the effects of exit polling — which tends to support the existence of strategic voting and the bandwagon ...
- 67.7k
3
votes
What challenges remain for online voting?
There is a bunch of requirements for proper voting most countries try to adhere to:
Anonymity - no one can find out for whom someone else voted
Accountability - you can be sure that your vote is ...
- 1,096
3
votes
Why don't ALL voting machines get fed a test batch of ballots before the election to prevent tampering/hacking?
This seems relatively easy to defeat.
if (ELECTION_DAY == date) {
make_my_candidate_win();
restore_executable_from_backup();
} else {
count_results_correctly();
}
That said, that they ...
- 89.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Are votes in electronic voting machines always manually counted?
Like everything else with elections, this varies state-by-state. This page has a list of what kind of machine each state uses (more detailed and up-to-date map here), but there are effectively five ...
- 23.9k
3
votes
Absentee Voting in Ohio - What does the "vote capturing machine" do?
It does everything but count; validates, potentially rejects, and makes the selection machine-readable.
It's basically the same step as a teacher would use to grade a test with an answer key overlay; ...
- 2,756
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible