Election System Based on the Blockchain?

[tyz]

I just thought about what could be realized by using blockchain technology. I came across that the blockchain could help to create a secure, distributed and not manipulable election system. Every (encrypted) vote must be verified by at least a particular amount of peers before it counts like a transaction. What do you think? Is such a system conceivable?

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[MicroGuy]

I just thought about what could be realized by using blockchain technology. I came across that the blockchain could help to create a secure, distributed and not manipulable election system. Every (encrypted) vote must be verified by at least a particular amount of peers before it counts like a transaction. What do you think? Is such a system conceivable?

Yes. Something like this should be adapted to steer the development of Bitcoin. We must break free from the ISIS coding regime.

[Jeremycoin]

It's surely would help the election, because the election would be more openly. But who will count the vote, what if the counter cheating while they counting the vote (so they didn't count all of the vote)

[shorena]

I just thought about what could be realized by using blockchain technology. I came across that the blockchain could help to create a secure, distributed and not manipulable election system. Every (encrypted) vote must be verified by at least a particular amount of peers before it counts like a transaction. What do you think? Is such a system conceivable?

-faschist-

Yes. Something like this should be adapted to steer the development of Bitcoin. We must break free from the ISIS coding regime.

What does a possible election system have to do with a dead faschist or with the coding abilities of an egyptian goddess?

It's surely would help the election, because the election would be more openly. But who will count the vote, what if the counter cheating while they counting the vote (so they didn't count all of the vote)

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

[shulio]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

[louise123]

The idea of having voting on the blockchain isn't bad.
It's quite good actually.
The question is: Will the governments accept to use a fair method of voting without tampering with it?

[Amph]

an idea like this could be used for block generation too, against 51% i think, so the longest chain don't count anymore, and the general nodes's consensus will establish if that is legit or doublespend

it could also be used for verify real full node

[thebenjamincode]

thats a great idea! i hope that the system would not have a vote premined

[favdesu]

followmyvote.com is working on a blockchain based voting system for BitShares.

[shorena]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

Its certainly possible to make only a certain set of keys valid, e.g. by signing the pubkeys. You would create a private key, go to an office, show your ID and let them sign your pubkey. That way you now have a private key that no one else has that would be eligible for voting and possibly other government contact. This would however make it possible to know in hindsight who I voted for. In order to make sure I dont go to every government office in my city and get several keys signed they need to keep track who has a signed key and which key it is. If there is a record which key belongs to which person it will some day be revealed. This would enable someone to know who voted for which party, which as the past taught us is not a good idea. Esp. if you consider that those in power have the highest chance to acquire the information.

Im not sure how this could be solved.

[bounst]

I look forward to a year of presidential elections in the United States of America, through blockchain

[turvarya]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

Its certainly possible to make only a certain set of keys valid, e.g. by signing the pubkeys. You would create a private key, go to an office, show your ID and let them sign your pubkey. That way you now have a private key that no one else has that would be eligible for voting and possibly other government contact. This would however make it possible to know in hindsight who I voted for. In order to make sure I dont go to every government office in my city and get several keys signed they need to keep track who has a signed key and which key it is. If there is a record which key belongs to which person it will some day be revealed. This would enable someone to know who voted for which party, which as the past taught us is not a good idea. Esp. if you consider that those in power have the highest chance to acquire the information.

Im not sure how this could be solved.

I also thought about that, for some time.
The government could just make paper wallets, that are loaded with one vote. You go in the office show your ID, and grab a paper wallet from a jar of paper wallets and get crossed of the list. You could then send the vote from the paper wallet(which private key, was made by the government) to your self generated address.

[shorena]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

Its certainly possible to make only a certain set of keys valid, e.g. by signing the pubkeys. You would create a private key, go to an office, show your ID and let them sign your pubkey. That way you now have a private key that no one else has that would be eligible for voting and possibly other government contact. This would however make it possible to know in hindsight who I voted for. In order to make sure I dont go to every government office in my city and get several keys signed they need to keep track who has a signed key and which key it is. If there is a record which key belongs to which person it will some day be revealed. This would enable someone to know who voted for which party, which as the past taught us is not a good idea. Esp. if you consider that those in power have the highest chance to acquire the information.

Im not sure how this could be solved.

I also thought about that, for some time.
The government could just make paper wallets, that are loaded with one vote. You go in the office show your ID, and grab a paper wallet from a jar of paper wallets and get crossed of the list. You could then send the vote from the paper wallet(which private key, was made by the government) to your self generated address.

Isnt that exactly what we have now or only more complicated? I get mail that on day X its time to vote. At the day of the vote I go to the office (or temp place they set up), show my ID, get a piece of paper, vote from on the paper and go home....

[Agestorzrxx]

Election System already has been realized in QORA and NXT blockchian. And it still have a lot of work to do make it realized in bitcoin blockchain. I am not sure it will be really usefull.

[turvarya]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

Its certainly possible to make only a certain set of keys valid, e.g. by signing the pubkeys. You would create a private key, go to an office, show your ID and let them sign your pubkey. That way you now have a private key that no one else has that would be eligible for voting and possibly other government contact. This would however make it possible to know in hindsight who I voted for. In order to make sure I dont go to every government office in my city and get several keys signed they need to keep track who has a signed key and which key it is. If there is a record which key belongs to which person it will some day be revealed. This would enable someone to know who voted for which party, which as the past taught us is not a good idea. Esp. if you consider that those in power have the highest chance to acquire the information.

Im not sure how this could be solved.

I also thought about that, for some time.
The government could just make paper wallets, that are loaded with one vote. You go in the office show your ID, and grab a paper wallet from a jar of paper wallets and get crossed of the list. You could then send the vote from the paper wallet(which private key, was made by the government) to your self generated address.

Isnt that exactly what we have now or only more complicated? I get mail that on day X its time to vote. At the day of the vote I go to the office (or temp place they set up), show my ID, get a piece of paper, vote from on the paper and go home....

It is not the same, since you don't have the votes on a blockchain.
You put a piece of paper in a jar and the next day you see a result in the news. You don't know, if your paper in the jar is really part of the result. I often thought, "What if I made a mistake on my ballot and made my vote invalid? I would never know"

[Kakmakr]

The advantage of using the blockchain is that it's public and transparent and it cannot be changed or manipulated.
The theory and the vehicle is there, but the application in practice is very complicated.
You will have proof, that all votes entered is counted, but anonymity cannot be guaranteed. 
Good luck, with whomever wants to tackle this conundrum. <Yea, I know my spelling sucks>

[amiryaqot]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

Its certainly possible to make only a certain set of keys valid, e.g. by signing the pubkeys. You would create a private key, go to an office, show your ID and let them sign your pubkey. That way you now have a private key that no one else has that would be eligible for voting and possibly other government contact. This would however make it possible to know in hindsight who I voted for. In order to make sure I dont go to every government office in my city and get several keys signed they need to keep track who has a signed key and which key it is. If there is a record which key belongs to which person it will some day be revealed. This would enable someone to know who voted for which party, which as the past taught us is not a good idea. Esp. if you consider that those in power have the highest chance to acquire the information.

Im not sure how this could be solved.

I also thought about that, for some time.
The government could just make paper wallets, that are loaded with one vote. You go in the office show your ID, and grab a paper wallet from a jar of paper wallets and get crossed of the list. You could then send the vote from the paper wallet(which private key, was made by the government) to your self generated address.

Isnt that exactly what we have now or only more complicated? I get mail that on day X its time to vote. At the day of the vote I go to the office (or temp place they set up), show my ID, get a piece of paper, vote from on the paper and go home....

It is not the same, since you don't have the votes on a blockchain.
You put a piece of paper in a jar and the next day you see a result in the news. You don't know, if your paper in the jar is really part of the result. I often thought, "What if I made a mistake on my ballot and made my vote invalid? I would never know"

that is valid question about vote status that is accepted or not and nobody knows about that with current paper voting system, if they convert the voting system to the Blockchain that will be more transparent and secure voting system ever, the result can't be manipulated by 3rd party wishes. 

[Ivanhoe]

To make things even more interesting why not let the people vote for laws instead of peoples through blockchain technology?

[shorena]

It is not the same, since you don't have the votes on a blockchain.
You put a piece of paper in a jar and the next day you see a result in the news. You don't know, if your paper in the jar is really part of the result. I often thought, "What if I made a mistake on my ballot and made my vote invalid? I would never know"

that is valid question about vote status that is accepted or not and nobody knows about that with current paper voting system, if they convert the voting system to the Blockchain that will be more transparent and secure voting system ever, the result can't be manipulated by 3rd party wishes. 

Im not sure how the voting system works in your country, but here the counting is public. You can watch them count every single vote and make sure they make no mistake. You might even distinguish your piece of paper from the others for some reason.

The advantage of using the blockchain is that it's public and transparent and it cannot be changed or manipulated.
The theory and the vehicle is there, but the application in practice is very complicated.
You will have proof, that all votes entered is counted, but anonymity cannot be guaranteed. 
Good luck, with whomever wants to tackle this conundrum. <Yea, I know my spelling sucks>

We already have (or at least I hope for you) a public and transparent system. It tedious, yes. Removing the anonymity of votes is ridiculous. It is essential to a democracy that I have no reason to be afraid of repercussions when casting my vote. This is why party membership is highly sensitive information.

[gkv9]

This will absolutely help out the election system in order to get the things going... But all we need to look for is verification of identities which might not be possible as it will be encrypted (somewhat unclear to me, so please correct me if I am wrong)...

But yes, this might surely help us to prevent the duplication of votes...

[Snail2]

Voting is already implemented in a couple of altcoins (PTS, Bitshares, NXT). I guess these implementations are need some adjustments for making a generic voting system as these are providing a weighted voting system.

[tmpxeroc]

Checkout:
https://followmyvote.com/

[Amph]

The advantage of using the blockchain is that it's public and transparent and it cannot be changed or manipulated.
The theory and the vehicle is there, but the application in practice is very complicated.
You will have proof, that all votes entered is counted, but anonymity cannot be guaranteed. 
Good luck, with whomever wants to tackle this conundrum. <Yea, I know my spelling sucks>

true there is a possibility of fake votes, because someone could always use tor/vpn/random proxy, to raise his vote

the problem is always there you can't connect one ip to a single user

[Daedelus]

It would be good for groups or organisations of known members to:

1) Create a voting token in an issuing account
2) Send those tokens to your members, making sure those tokens can only be sent to or from the issuing account so votes can be sent to others (they cans till be bribed but the blockchain can't stop that)
3) Start a vote on the blockchain that only recognizes those tokens in the count
4) Have the blockchain auto-collate the result transparently and publish it at a given block height in the future
5) And to do all this for <$5

That would be cool.. 

[SebastianJu]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

Its certainly possible to make only a certain set of keys valid, e.g. by signing the pubkeys. You would create a private key, go to an office, show your ID and let them sign your pubkey. That way you now have a private key that no one else has that would be eligible for voting and possibly other government contact. This would however make it possible to know in hindsight who I voted for. In order to make sure I dont go to every government office in my city and get several keys signed they need to keep track who has a signed key and which key it is. If there is a record which key belongs to which person it will some day be revealed. This would enable someone to know who voted for which party, which as the past taught us is not a good idea. Esp. if you consider that those in power have the highest chance to acquire the information.

Im not sure how this could be solved.

Though you could give your key to another person. So that its not ensured that you yourself vote with it. There are occassionally cases where votes are bought.

If its known who holds which key then its no secret anymore, like you mentioned.

I thought about that topic often too, because i think real democracy, which means ruling of the citizens, and full transparency for politicians activities, are the key for a real fair government. The actual democracy is a joke. Citizens have the right to vote one time in a couple of years and they lose that right to other the rest of the time. Calling that democracy is a joke.

So if someone can think of a way to make votes so that everyone can take part, that no one can know who you voted for and that there is a way to at least check somehow if your vote was counted correctly, then it would be great.

[tyz]

It would be very difficult if not impossible to implement a 1-person-1-vote system on an ANONYMOUS blockchain since any individual could easily set up multiple accounts.

What about that? If there are 100 million eligible voters then you create a blockchain with excatly 100 million tokens. Each eligible voter gets a hash by email/post mail which let him/her create a public/private key pair (hash will be check for validity but can not be retraced to the created key pair) with exactly one token that allows to vote.

[ebliever]

A cheat durring count could be checked after the count was made public, if everyones vote is on the blockchain thats very easy. IMHO what is more problematic is that you need to make sure than everyone gets only one vote and no one can reveal the identity of the person voting. If this would work like bitcoin, I could just create a new private key (or 1 million) to have an additional (or 1 million more) vote(s). If they are distributed in advance they might be linked to me as a person and thus all votes might get public in case of a data leak.

Any idea that could it work like the tradisional voting system where there are a fixed amount of voters depending on the requirement like atleast 17 years old to vote. Than the number of those 17 years old will be counted and a private key will be created as the same number of people for that, distributed among them to make sure everyone get one vote?

Its certainly possible to make only a certain set of keys valid, e.g. by signing the pubkeys. You would create a private key, go to an office, show your ID and let them sign your pubkey. That way you now have a private key that no one else has that would be eligible for voting and possibly other government contact. This would however make it possible to know in hindsight who I voted for. In order to make sure I dont go to every government office in my city and get several keys signed they need to keep track who has a signed key and which key it is. If there is a record which key belongs to which person it will some day be revealed. This would enable someone to know who voted for which party, which as the past taught us is not a good idea. Esp. if you consider that those in power have the highest chance to acquire the information.

Im not sure how this could be solved.

I also thought about that, for some time.
The government could just make paper wallets, that are loaded with one vote. You go in the office show your ID, and grab a paper wallet from a jar of paper wallets and get crossed of the list. You could then send the vote from the paper wallet(which private key, was made by the government) to your self generated address.

What would stop a person from creating a new key for every time they walked into a different office? Seems to me that there would need to be centralized control, matching ballot distribution against a list of enfranchised voters and tracking who has been given a ballot and who has not. But that leads to the question of how we know a ballot was requested by each specific voter (not grabbed by a ACORN type 3rd party) which takes us back to the need for old-style manual identification of each voter. I see some possibilities for use of a blockchain in voting, but only within the context of old-school voter verification methods to prevent fraud on the front end.

[Elwar]

BitPools has a voting system set up which uses the blockchain.

[tyz]

I just read an interesting article on cointelegraph what is related to the topic here.

Max Kaye is an Aussie with a passion for Bitcoin. He is currently working to bring a novel political party, the Neutral Voting Bloc, into existence using the bitcoin blockchain turning it into a political party of the future. He occasionally writes in his free time on subjects within the union of computer science and economics. An aspiring social entrepreneur; Kaye seeks growth in culture and society over account balances, and looks forward to the novel opportunities afforded within a Bitcoin based economy, including exciting restructurings of society.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/114404/true-democracy-worlds-first-political-app-blockchain-party-launches-in-australia

[Daedelus]

So far it seems like only POS blockchains have produced working voting systems. In these systems the individual's vote is weighted according to the size of their stake.

Nxt can weigh the vote by a few different things: vote by stake, vote by account, vote by asset (shareholder votes), vote by MSCurrency.

Here is a Voting System teaser video describing it, URL set to the exact bit I am referring too > https://youtu.be/dhJgz6hpHXg?t=69

The video gives a good overview of the whole Voting System too. Goes live on the mainnet at block 445,000, excited!  

[kripto para]

Identification is a huge problem on that. How will you identify the voters?
Identity theft cases will increase. Also current governments have access to all identities...

[tyz]

Well, that's a good point. i would solve it like already described in a previous post. Every country has got a electoral register. Every eligible voter will get a unique hash code by email or post mail. The hash code has been created by a strong algorithm implemented into the software. The voter can use it to verify that he is eligible to vote and to create its private / public key values. Every hash can used only once.

Identification is a huge problem on that. How will you identify the voters?
Identity theft cases will increase. Also current governments have access to all identities...

[tyz]

An interesting article related to this topic has been published on TheBitcoinMagazine today. Check out...

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21031/blockchain-technology-key-secure-online-voting

[jyakulis]

But they already invested so much money in infrastructure to allow them to cheat.

[Harry Hood]

Brilliant idea. Definitely could be implemented. And I like the 2nd poster's comment about implementing it within the Bitcoin project so that changes to the infrastructure (i.e., the hard fork) and other ideas could be decided upon judiciously.

Are you going to take this idea to the next level of development? I'd love to get involved.

[blablaace]

I'm sure the government would really like this idea .. NOT