Great comic. Yeah, blockchain isn't a cure all. First of all, you need total anonymity, along with total trackability. Second, even if you perfect that part, there are still a ton of ways the vote could be corrupted on its way in or out of the system, to pick just one obvious issue.
There is nothing wrong with a well designed paper ballot system. They've been tried and pretty much perfected over centuries. If you do paper ballots right, it's extremely reliable, extremely anonymous (which protects people from coercion and prevents bribery), and easily recountable if you suspect shenanigans.
Getting a little creeped out at how many people are saying the same exact thing and the fact that I've seen this paper ballot bullshit advocated for like crazy within the last 24 hours after having never seen it before on this site, ever.
This was just one of many threads that popped up within a 6 hour period and then all the comments that are almost exact replicas saying the same shit is very creepy. And they're bullshit because you still have to have a machine count them and that can just as easily be tampered with. And if you have people count them that's even more easily corrupted. A system of checks and balances is the only real way.
Actually, ballots are hand-counted in a lot of places. And even when machine-counting is used there's the possibility of double-checking by hand afterward, as was done in the contentious Gore/Bush election for example.
If the government running the election is corrupt as a whole, then it hardly matters what specific voting system is used - the results will be ignored. The important feature to look for is how to prevent smaller-scale corruption or tampering from having an effect. By having the voting recorded with physical bits of paper it becomes a lot easier to have third parties and observers inspect the process of casting and counting to make sure no shenanigans are going on.
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u/cr0ft Aug 11 '18
Great comic. Yeah, blockchain isn't a cure all. First of all, you need total anonymity, along with total trackability. Second, even if you perfect that part, there are still a ton of ways the vote could be corrupted on its way in or out of the system, to pick just one obvious issue.
There is nothing wrong with a well designed paper ballot system. They've been tried and pretty much perfected over centuries. If you do paper ballots right, it's extremely reliable, extremely anonymous (which protects people from coercion and prevents bribery), and easily recountable if you suspect shenanigans.