Bitcoin Forum

Simplified Essentially every voter issued with a private key for with one vote on it at election time, or perhaps their social security number could also be the basis of the private key being signed.

They then send that vote to the candidate, party, cause, candidates address of their choice.

This becomes provably fair, and you have minimal problems with vote counting as you know how many people were registered to vote, and how you voted. Enough people would be looking at this to see if any dogey private keys with votes were being used, without being issued as you would risk end up with more votes that registered voters, and you could check that address

While some flaws may exist, here is the broad brush strokes for completely replacement of the mechanics of vote counting. Colored coins could be used for different legislative houses, etc or other features.

The electoral offices and systems of the world would save untold billions using this system, and you could vote from home.

In some instances this would make direct democracies more workable or better forms of government.

In some ways what BTC itself is doing now is a form of voting for a new form of societal structure if you thing about it, except it is real time, and a lot more nuanced and open than anything that has gone before it.

I like the idea.

Yes BTC will disrupt many voting, identity and economy problems.

Process of issuing private keys can be corrupted.

it can but usually registration on rolls is public so it would be relatively easy to see how many people voted. It could make any cheating quite easy to detect. There would be enough interested parties to follow the block chain for this with some scrutiny.

Heck you could even merge mine it with BTC if you wanted.

also you can use signing the public private key to move the coin with some other property to reduce this.

Not a criticism just a discussion - how do you stop users from selling their vote?

Especially if they can now publicly prove they voted a certain way.

good point, would it be wrong to sell your vote? isn't this just a form of price/opportunity discovery.

The reason votes are done secretly is (in part) for the purpose of preventing people from selling their vote.  There are no buyers because the buyers have no way of knowing whether the seller was truthful. 

While price discovery could be a function - vote buying is not how democracy is supposed to function. (At least not directly, it definitely occurs indirectly by pork barreling). 

That's a good point as you correctly point out you wouldn't know if buying a vote would be effective as you despite payment have no way of enforcing the voteing despite payment as voting is anon

See the link in my signature. I am working on a voting system using Bitcoin.

I think the idea of one person one vote is a bit old fashioned so I do not see much point in it.

But if it was something that was needed, instead of people getting private addresses from the government they would register their public address when they go to vote. Only those addresses listed would be counted.

I am not sure how you would prevent people paying for votes though. That is why I believe your "vote" should be tied to your monetary contribution to the "government".

real change

I think you guys should read/would like: What Money Can't Buy by Michael J Sandel

We are going to have to disagree on whether or not Donald Trump should get 10 million votes. 

But Donald Trump should be able to decide what his $10 million goes toward.

No.  Because then the only government projects left will be pork barrel projects.  People will only agree to fund projects where they get a kickback.  Donald Trump will only agree to find the new aircraft carrier if his defence subcontractor is selected to build it so he ends up earning a profit on his taxes.

ok I get it, so you give govt pubic address an any signal (1 coin, 0.001 whatever) on day x = i++ from your registered address...

that would work

What prevents government from creating sufficient amount of virtual voters?

The problem is solved if we give up secrecy of voting.

exactly its was made secretive just to rig it

You assume you have 100% turnout of voters for this check to work.

If you only had a 50% turnout of voters and 50% fake votes you still wouldn't break the 100% total number of voters registered.


But as a concept of voting, I like the idea. Good thinking!

Voting for politicians is just voting for who you want to steal from you. It never changes. If it did, voting would be illegal. Totally pointless.

My vote is up for sale to the highest bidder. Do I hear BTC1?

+1

So no more anonymous voting?

Maybe the voting system should be changed. Now is 1 vote per person but maybe it would be better to vote with wallet strength. That way you would not need to bribe anybody because richest would had strong vote anyway. And it would be much more simple.

You need the illusion that regular people matter.