USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System(heraldsheets.com)
heraldsheets.com
USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System
https://heraldsheets.com/us-postal-service-usps-files-patent-for-blockchain-based-voting-system/
371 comments
You could easily replace the word Blockchain in this patent application with the word database and it would all still make sense.
Blockchains (I prefer to call them Merkle trees) were invented 40 years ago. The interesting part about cryptocurrency based Blockchains that makes them unforgeable is that they contain proof of work. The work to create an entire Blockchain is equal to the sum of the work contained in each node. Without proof of work Blockchains are easily forgeable.
Blockchains (I prefer to call them Merkle trees) were invented 40 years ago. The interesting part about cryptocurrency based Blockchains that makes them unforgeable is that they contain proof of work. The work to create an entire Blockchain is equal to the sum of the work contained in each node. Without proof of work Blockchains are easily forgeable.
My whole startup is built on blockchain, and I'm an Estonian e-Resident (Estonia allows their citizens to vote digitally), so I find blockchain voting fascinating. That said, there are some problems with it. This Tom Scott video explains why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs.
But this is a very cool idea: combining the USPS vote-by-mail infrastructure with a blockchain layer that sits on top, used mainly to provide anonymous provenance. We'll see if this ever gets implemented, but I think it's a great example of the non-hype uses for blockchains being explored.
But this is a very cool idea: combining the USPS vote-by-mail infrastructure with a blockchain layer that sits on top, used mainly to provide anonymous provenance. We'll see if this ever gets implemented, but I think it's a great example of the non-hype uses for blockchains being explored.
All blockchain (and electronic for that matter) voting systems are inherently bad because they are not easy to verify.
Nothing beats pen and paper in verifiability and ease of use. If done right with many eyes on the ballots, manipulation requires thousands of co-conspirators. The only downside is the slow speed.
Nothing beats pen and paper in verifiability and ease of use. If done right with many eyes on the ballots, manipulation requires thousands of co-conspirators. The only downside is the slow speed.
- Won't work. People will lose their private keys. Apparently the key is distributed to people on a piece of paper in the mail. That will get stolen--or claimed to be stolen. It will be a mess.
- What's the point of a blockchain here? Is USPS raising money with an ICO? The use of digital signatures is enough. By having a "distributed public ledger" now you open the possibility of getting Sybil attacked. But wait, you say, USPS has their own canoncial version of the chain that they can force everyone to rollback to in case of an attack--then what was the point of a blockchain? You could just have a website that shows a list of public keys and who they voted for. It would be totally auditable by anyone, just as a blockchain would be, without any of the security risks of a blockchain.
- What's the point of a blockchain here? Is USPS raising money with an ICO? The use of digital signatures is enough. By having a "distributed public ledger" now you open the possibility of getting Sybil attacked. But wait, you say, USPS has their own canoncial version of the chain that they can force everyone to rollback to in case of an attack--then what was the point of a blockchain? You could just have a website that shows a list of public keys and who they voted for. It would be totally auditable by anyone, just as a blockchain would be, without any of the security risks of a blockchain.
Did they also invent a system which protects against voter coercion? If they did not, they might as well stop now since no matter how secure the voting system is its relevance falls down to zero if it is possible for the local gang leader to coerce voters to vote for 'his' candidate - "my man stands behind you to watch you vote for candidate X, if you so much as twitch your little girl gets whipped" (which works but doesn't scale that well) or "you show me proof of you voting for candidate X or we'll burn down your house" (which scales but depends on vote verifiability and as such is rather easily foiled).
Maybe they should maintain the postal boxes, have enough sorting machines, maintain the necessary manpower/processes, and remain independent enough to deliver the fucking mail.
So, we are making all the votes a matter of public record?
It's either do that, or the voter is forced to blind trust whatever system is used to record their voter intent.
To consider this problem properly, think about the problem a blind voter has with a ballot. They cannot see the record of their vote, when it's made by a mark. With a punch card, they cannot see the candidate associated with their record either.
They have to trust whoever helps them cast their vote actually does cast it correctly. There is no chain of trust between voter intent and the record of vote cast.
Now, in the context of electronic voting, a person touches a screen gives an audio input, whatever. They have to trust the system does what they intend. There is no meaningful verification due to the fact that the system could tell them anything.
When a vote is cast on media with a mark, and that mark and media are used for the final tally, the voter knows their intent was recorded, and that intent could be used directly to determine the outcome of the election.
(other corruption can happen, and is outside the scope of this comment)
Without a public vote record, voters have no idea whether they can trust the election. Blockchain does not help with this problem, unless it's a public affair, everyone sees how everyone else voted.
Banking gets around this by always having redundancies. Books are kept in many locations and all must and can be reconciled.
Voting has no such redundancy, and due to that, electronic input has a basic trust problem not being discussed enough in my opinion.
It's either do that, or the voter is forced to blind trust whatever system is used to record their voter intent.
To consider this problem properly, think about the problem a blind voter has with a ballot. They cannot see the record of their vote, when it's made by a mark. With a punch card, they cannot see the candidate associated with their record either.
They have to trust whoever helps them cast their vote actually does cast it correctly. There is no chain of trust between voter intent and the record of vote cast.
Now, in the context of electronic voting, a person touches a screen gives an audio input, whatever. They have to trust the system does what they intend. There is no meaningful verification due to the fact that the system could tell them anything.
When a vote is cast on media with a mark, and that mark and media are used for the final tally, the voter knows their intent was recorded, and that intent could be used directly to determine the outcome of the election.
(other corruption can happen, and is outside the scope of this comment)
Without a public vote record, voters have no idea whether they can trust the election. Blockchain does not help with this problem, unless it's a public affair, everyone sees how everyone else voted.
Banking gets around this by always having redundancies. Books are kept in many locations and all must and can be reconciled.
Voting has no such redundancy, and due to that, electronic input has a basic trust problem not being discussed enough in my opinion.
It's the illusion of safety. There is no facility for identity verification baked into blockchain. You have integrity for the data allowed on the chain but if you let Russian hackers write to it, it undermines the whole thing. Personally I'd rather go with a PKI system that offers non-repudiation.
What troubles me with this is that at some point in the system there will need to be a mapping "real identity" -> "ID of voter in the blockchain".
What happens the day this mapping leaks?
What happens the day this mapping leaks?
What is wrong with in-person paper-ballots? They have worked for centuries. And continue to be the absolute best system from multiple criteria.
For peoples looking for the truth about blockchain voting:
https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/PSNR20.pdf
https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/PSNR20.pdf
Electronic voting is a terrible idea.
Attacks on paper & pen ballot systems are much, much harder to scale.
Here's Tom Scott with a great explanation of the basics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
Attacks on paper & pen ballot systems are much, much harder to scale.
Here's Tom Scott with a great explanation of the basics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs
If you were creating a society on Mars, would you use a system of people lining up in-person to vote? Probably not.
Rigged elections have been a thing for a very long time. The shenanigans in Belarus is only the latest example.
Covid-19 will accelerate the inevitable. We're having a mail-in election this year, people will get comfortable voting from home and it's only a matter of time before people start asking why they can't just do it on their phone. I'm excited for blockchain voting.
Rigged elections have been a thing for a very long time. The shenanigans in Belarus is only the latest example.
Covid-19 will accelerate the inevitable. We're having a mail-in election this year, people will get comfortable voting from home and it's only a matter of time before people start asking why they can't just do it on their phone. I'm excited for blockchain voting.
There's already a few cryptotokens that allow voting on maintenance of said cryptotokens (or affiliated ones) would these not invalidate such a patent?
Edit:
On another side, what if we did use Blockchain to supplement votes in a different approach. I have not yet looked at how other Cryptotokens handle voting on policies but say we distribute to each state enough tokens per their legal citizen population, and voting places use a single token per voter, maybe a code is attached to their ballot (maybe a district code, only identifying their region?), this in turn pushes the vote into the blockchain for a permanent record, then when all the manual / machine counting is done we compare the blockchain results to see who screwed up, but it would also allow for a slightly more live view of voting in real-time.
Edit:
On another side, what if we did use Blockchain to supplement votes in a different approach. I have not yet looked at how other Cryptotokens handle voting on policies but say we distribute to each state enough tokens per their legal citizen population, and voting places use a single token per voter, maybe a code is attached to their ballot (maybe a district code, only identifying their region?), this in turn pushes the vote into the blockchain for a permanent record, then when all the manual / machine counting is done we compare the blockchain results to see who screwed up, but it would also allow for a slightly more live view of voting in real-time.
I received two separate ballots on two different people who resided in this house in the past. What’s stopping me from filling both these ballots and mailing them. The point is unless and until the voter roll integrity is guaranteed there is always a possibility of fraud.
The caltech voting project has a nice collection if papers about electronic voting:
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/
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Majority vote in a block chain isn't an election -- it's a 51% attack. Without a consistent economic incentive, too cheap for bad actors to act badly.
If you already have working electronic voting (for the sake of argument) you don't need to elect representatives any more, you can just vote on issues directly and set quorums and thresholds. For that matter you don't really need ballots any more either, you can have the corpus of laws as a wiki and just edit it.
Was this patent filed before or after the head of USPS was installed by the Dear Leader?
I thought we made it past the era of every company having a blockchain patent.
Regarding sale of verifiable votes. Why not regulate the sale and tax it ?
Blockchain is important, but perhaps equally as important is the ability for every user of the system to be able to audit every other user, that is, vote/voter exact information transparency...
Does that mean they can now further de-prioritize mail delivery? I'm waiting for weeks on my EDD debit card. If only someone would have invented a way to transfer funds electronically ...
A distributed ledger approach is a very bad idea because a foreign country can launch a 51% attack on the ledger and has the resources to win and thus modify the ledger.
Why does a government service provider need to file a patent?
Isn't the bigger issue here that someone can file a patent for something so blatantly obvious? Patents in software seem to do nothing good for innovation.
It will all run on servers, where I am the administrator.
How is this at all patentable? Can someone explain the line between new innovation and application of existing technology?
Then, when counting the votes for each candidate we display the running product of all the primes counted for that candidate as a "checksum", or "check product". This retains privacy while allowing individual voters to easily verify that their vote was counted by simply dividing their party's checksum by their prime ballot number and confirming that it is a factor of the check product. By displaying a running product of votes, you can also verify that your vote was not counted before you voted. Additionally, this prevents double counting because the "checksum" for N primes must match exactly N votes and no two candidates can share a factor. By issuing sequences of primes to certain regions, you can get some metrics by state.
Then you institute a rule that if some % of primes dispute that theirs was counted correctly, a recount is automatically triggered.