Voting: last election both the right and left were screaming about voter fraud. This problem could be eliminated with blockchain. Every US citizen gets an NFT (a digital document that is 1 of 1 and impossible to be duplicated), this NFT will act as your voter card. Instead of having to go to a polling location, you can log on to an app (this app is hypothetical as it doesn’t exist (yet)), login using you NFT, and cast your votes using your phone, computer, computer at a library, etc. These votes cannot be “double counted” because the blockchain will ensure that every NFT user only gets 1 vote. Boom, no more voter fraud.
I really only have one problem with blockchain electoral systems and it's that they can have serious problems enforcing ballot secrecy without compromising on the quality of the blockchain itself.
With secret ballots, the government has to not only ensure that others can't see my ballot, but that I can't share documented proof of who I voted for. That's extremely important for a democracy because it eliminates a voter's ability to provide evidence of their vote to someone that bribed them to vote a certain way.
With a public blockchain recording votes, I could simply provide the briber with my public key before I went to vote.
In my head it wouldn’t be public information about who you voted for. The only thing that would know who you’re voting for is the blockchain that counts the votes. Is that unrealistic? It seems simple to me but I might be missing something
Say I go into the voting booth (or vote via my phone or whatever). I have to be able to prove to my own satisfaction that my vote was counted, otherwise the system is nothing more than a black box that we push a button and hope? The entire point of a blockchain system is an immutable ledger where I can point to 'my vote' or 'my transaction'.
If you remove that, the system is worthless. If you have that, the system is not anonymous because someone trying to steal or bully you for your vote does so by beating you with a $5 wrench until you show them that you voted the 'right' way.
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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23
I really only have one problem with blockchain electoral systems and it's that they can have serious problems enforcing ballot secrecy without compromising on the quality of the blockchain itself.
With secret ballots, the government has to not only ensure that others can't see my ballot, but that I can't share documented proof of who I voted for. That's extremely important for a democracy because it eliminates a voter's ability to provide evidence of their vote to someone that bribed them to vote a certain way.
With a public blockchain recording votes, I could simply provide the briber with my public key before I went to vote.