A fraud-proof voting system based on Bitcoin and Zerocoin

[jubalix]

That... looks absolutely fantastic.

If you can patent that, I would suggest you do so.

once you publish in like this you can't patent it.

[luv2drnkbr]

It would be nice to have a website - could be something with a name like radiobuttondemocracy.com, or something - that you would login with facebook to assign your desired public key to be associated with your facebook username.
Then you would have a list of questions for all sorts of things for each country/nation/state like:

USA
Do you want gay marriage to be legal there?
Do you want cannabis to be legal there?
Do you want abortion to be legal there?
etc.
etc.
...
...

Canada
Do you want gay marriage to be legal there?
Do you want cannabis to be legal there?
Do you want abortion to be legal there?
etc.
etc.
...
...

UK
Do you want gay marriage to be legal there?
Do you want cannabis to be legal there?
Do you want abortion to be legal there?
etc.
etc.
...
...

It would use this provably fair system or similar so you could just login with your facebook to keep the answers updated and on the day of voting you would just sign the voting with your private key and all votes would be sent at the same time on that voting day.

That's reminiscent of a recent reddit post:

This means, for example, that we could have laws and voting on new laws done in an anonymous and enforceable manner. Imagine a semi-anarchist city where each citizen isn't a citizen unless they happen to currently physically be there, and to reside there they put up a deposit for some amount of time, which gets taxed over time for social services, and forfeited completely if they violate the laws, and returned to them if and when they leave. (All automatically enforceable.) And everybody anonymously votes on new laws using colored coins from the same addresses. Proposed legislation is uploaded anonymously. Bam you have a functioning society with laws and social welfare and cohesiveness, which is still entirely voluntary, with true actual democracy, and no leaders-- just the protocol, which you agreed to when you entered the city limits. Taxation would be minimal and 100% efficient, and go only towards what the population decided were necessary services. Public servants could have their jobs voted on on a weekly basis.

[BTC-TK]

Only problem then is that about 500 basement dwelling nerds with mustaches would vote.

[amincd]

It would be nice to have a website - could be something with a name like radiobuttondemocracy.com, or something - that you would login with facebook to assign your desired public key to be associated with your facebook username.
Then you would have a list of questions for all sorts of things for each country/nation/state like:

USA
Do you want gay marriage to be legal there?
Do you want cannabis to be legal there?
Do you want abortion to be legal there?
etc.
etc.
...
...

Canada
Do you want gay marriage to be legal there?
Do you want cannabis to be legal there?
Do you want abortion to be legal there?
etc.
etc.
...
...

UK
Do you want gay marriage to be legal there?
Do you want cannabis to be legal there?
Do you want abortion to be legal there?
etc.
etc.
...
...

It would use this provably fair system or similar so you could just login with your facebook to keep the answers updated and on the day of voting you would just sign the voting with your private key and all votes would be sent at the same time on that voting day.

This is a great idea. It would be nice if there were a nonproprietary directory that could be used as an alternative to Facebook, but I guess FB would do.

Perhaps one vote could be held for each social network (FB, G+, LinkedIn, etc).

[superresistant]

Excellent idea.
What do you need to setup this ? Fund ? Devs ?

[BigJohn]

I don't quite get this. You say this:

There would be a public record showing the name of each voter and the public key that is linked to them. The public key is provided by the voter themselves, so they can be certain that only they have the private key for it.

So if the public record (which I assume is the blockchain) has the names, who gets to put the names on it? It sounds like it would require some central agency.

If that's not how it works, and there is no central authority, what's stopping an individual from "registering" several times and casting multiple votes?

[Elwar]

I have a voting system set up using only Bitcoin. It is used for my BitPools site.

Very close to Beta but the voting portion is quite nice.

[BitOnyx]

Is it just me or does buying election votes would be much easier with this system then with current ways ? Also I am afraid it might require a bit too much from voters. Right now they are too lazy to go voting on election day. This system also would be a bit too difficult to explain to majority of population. And word coin probably would need to be removed since it would be even more confusing for a lot of people.

Anyway I love the initiation of alternate usage of bitcoin technologies. It shows large potential of usage not only in alternative monetary systems. Great idea in general

[Speaker1264]

It works in a way so that no one can create more than one vote, but it doesn't solve the issue of someone just handing over their coin/private key to someone else.  That is core problem of voting at the moment, until someone finds a way of verifying that no one uses more than one vote, while everyone's votes still remain anonymous.

[notbatman]

could a biometric hash work?

[allyouracid]

I like the idea itself, although it would be a hell of a task to base a whole election on such a system (meaning setting up the infrastructure and making quite everybody use (prior: understand) it). That would make it extremely difficult, regarding how unflexible countries are as a whole when it comes down to changing things.
And Facebook (or any similar private company) would be the very last thing which i would consider connecting to my votes.

[sundance]

I see applications of this in many types of voting scenarios.

I recommend using the Paillier cryptosystem or other homomorphic cryptosystem to encrypt the contents of the vote. While people listening to the blockchain don't know who voted for who, they can see the subtotals of the vote during the vote (and potentially interfere with the outcome).

With homomorphic cryptosystems, the candidate choice is encrypted, and subtotals are done on the encrypted text so that subtotals are encrypted by definition and unknowable until the voting is done.

[mably]

Any progress on this really exciting project?

[serenitys]

Love this and would support it 1000%...

votecoin wishlist

all potential candidates buy into bitcoin with bitcoin (or whatever cryptocurrenc) to an escrow account held for term duration
for each block of time, if said winner does not fulfill whatever promises or if the favor rating drops, each voter of said winner is awarded a bitcoin from the escrow account.

any fraud, bad dealings, corruption, etc. can quickly drain the escrow account and if it reaches a certain amount/quantity/level, the person must resign...and do it in an automatic encrypted way so it's tamper proof. If the favor rating goes up - naturally, also tamper proof - the person increases wealth at the end of the term, not during it, so they have incentive to do their jobs with honor and not cheat the system or the people.

At the end of the term, funds are passed on to the winner. if he/she is ousted, funds remain as a pool and held for the next election.

Basically along with the tamper proof voting, there needs to be a built in monitor that holds them accountable and discourages fraud and corruption.

Or, they buy in at a set rate, the above applies, but this is the coffer from which state business is drawn - roads, infrastructure, etc.

[sufisu]

I am in for any initiative as a multi-purpose developer. Please contact me if anyone has actual interest in this concept and wants to bring this into life.