• 2 Posts
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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: August 14th, 2024

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  • You’re thinking about the voting problem wrong, specifically not including all of the requirements

    The algorithm isn’t a black box like you’re saying, it’s fully auditable and decentralized so any fuckery is immediately visible.

    Their point is that even in this system, there is both a small and finite number of people who are skilled enough/qualified enough to perform that audit. I’m not sure I’ve got the math to be able to validate a blockchain transaction by hand without referring to a (potentially tainted) source repo. There’s a world where blockchain voting can solve this problem, but the competing requirements make it the less-optimal solution compared with paper voting.

    Specifically, there are 3 potentially competing requirements for a secure voting system in a functioning democracy:

    1. Votes must be accurately recorded and tallied
    2. Votes must not be attributable to any specific individual
    3. Votes must be auditable for an arbitrary amount of time

    Blockchains, potentially, optimize the voting problem for #1 while introducing explicit exposure in #s 2 and 3, while paper ballots optimize for 2 first, then 3.