>Hopefully something like a version of the technology described here, (or something else like this) will replace the voting technology we currently have
I doubt the layperson can understand how that technology works, and that is required for the voting to be democratic: Every voter has to be able to verify that there was no fraud. Not only mathematicians.
There are other countries without electronic voting, but also without the problems of US elections. But since these problems are not seen as bugs, but as features by those in power, I doubt things will change in the future. With or without technology.
>I doubt the layperson can understand how that technology works, and that is required for the voting to be democratic: Every voter has to be able to verify that there was no fraud. Not only mathematicians.
This is probably a good point, however this math is at most slightly more unusual than the math behind, e.g. https (which I guess 50 years ago public key cryptography wasn't even invented) and average people are starting to learn to trust that.
It's not about trusting the math, it's about understanding it. And not just the math, but also the protocols that use the math (the math may be secure after all, but the protocol not, c.f. the multiple vulnerabilities in SSL in recent times).
I mean- I am likely never going to understand the science that goes into fixing a tumor- I just haven't trained to be a doctor, nor plan to go that route at any time in my life. However, you can surely bet that I trust a doctor to take one out of me (without understanding it) if I have one - and this is the right thing for me to do.
And of course, the fact that occasionally some implementations of SSL have been found insecure is in no way an argument to not use it (at least until something more secure is available).
The analogy to the doctor makes no sense there is not even any competition going on in it. What if for some strange reason there was two doctors operating on you and they were competing to be the first to find and remove the tumor for millions of dollars. Would you trust them to have your best interest always in mind and not try to interfere with each other?
Not sure I'm understanding your rebuttal - in your example are the doctors the politicians, or the providers of the voting system? If the two doctors are the politicians, then I think you are misunderstanding my point, and probably the objection raised that I was referring to. If your doctors are the people running the voting blockchain, then that's the whole purpose of having the chain - that it's mathematically verifiable by "anyone." This would be like if all the doctors in the world have a chance to oversee the operation and make sure it goes down smoothly.
Without commenting on the particular circumstances here, it seems to me that the nominating process for a political party ought to be at least a little bit undemocratic. At the very least, current office-holders in the party ought to have some say in who gets nominated. (I would agree that giving corporate donors a say is pretty bad.)
If instead the DNC ran open primaries in each state with no superdelegates, what would be the point? You might as well just ban parties altogether (for election purposes anyway, caucusing might be a separate thing) and just have regular elections with two rounds. Note that I would prefer this, but I don't think it's what Greenwald is getting at.
My main point was not a claim on how a particular party should allocate their votes, or whether the primaries should be open to certain (or all) voters - rather the point of the paper is that the process can be completely transparent and cryptographically verifiable, so that once the votes are cast, any person can count the votes themselves and make sure the votes fell according to the rules which the party decided on (however fair or unfair those rules may be).
This doesn't do much for caucuses, for example, and it sounds pretty expensive compared to the current system in some states. It's not just about party control of candidates or "gaming" whatever system is in place.
Many states require the local parties to pay for their own primaries. Many local parties are bare bones organisations that only ramp up activity every couple of years or so. Voting mechanisms need to be scalable, affordable across a diversity of budgets and technical skill sets. Caucuses, for example, exist because they are dead easy to explain, don't cost any money, and are transparent at least so far as everyone can see who won just by looking around the room.
I don't actually expect it to be that expensive - myself and the authors of the paper have a working demo of the paper which I wrote myself in a couple of weeks (react-native clients / bigchaindb) and should be scalable to population levels (I'm still working on speeding up the crypto since I used some of my old demo code). A side note: this was my first project using react-native, and I found it to be quite fun.
As far as transparency, that's sort of the main point of the paper: if everyone can themselves check the votes by doing something as simple as looking at something like bc.info, then that imo is a large increase in transparency from the current system which only allows the room-members themselves to verify the results. I agree with you that caucuses in their current form are easy to explain, however I think we can abstract away all the difficult parts and make it a pleasant / easy experience.
I would agree. It seems Google Now has been pushing election updates for the last few months... The first few I received would only show Democrat results, though I never chose any party... Just got one today (or so), but it was more "balanced".
Let's not forget "Schmidt was an informal advisor and major donor to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and began campaigning the week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate." [2]
I'm sure some people internal [to Google] know more about this, but from my understanding there was a push to use internal technologies (ads/etc) as a force for campaigning...
Could it be rational for for Schmidt as Alphabet's head?
I am for some reason under the impression that Dems are more favorable for the tech sector, since they're relatively more lax on security, and that the American right tends do be somewhat anti-tech to please the older demographic (examplary anecdata is that /r/the_Donald have a serious beef with Google and Facebook)
It's very possible that the causality is reversed and the right is reacting to a tech's Democratic bias.
I wonder if this is somewhat based in reality or just my wrong hunch.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 38.4 ms ] threadI doubt the layperson can understand how that technology works, and that is required for the voting to be democratic: Every voter has to be able to verify that there was no fraud. Not only mathematicians.
There are other countries without electronic voting, but also without the problems of US elections. But since these problems are not seen as bugs, but as features by those in power, I doubt things will change in the future. With or without technology.
This is probably a good point, however this math is at most slightly more unusual than the math behind, e.g. https (which I guess 50 years ago public key cryptography wasn't even invented) and average people are starting to learn to trust that.
And of course, the fact that occasionally some implementations of SSL have been found insecure is in no way an argument to not use it (at least until something more secure is available).
If instead the DNC ran open primaries in each state with no superdelegates, what would be the point? You might as well just ban parties altogether (for election purposes anyway, caucusing might be a separate thing) and just have regular elections with two rounds. Note that I would prefer this, but I don't think it's what Greenwald is getting at.
Many states require the local parties to pay for their own primaries. Many local parties are bare bones organisations that only ramp up activity every couple of years or so. Voting mechanisms need to be scalable, affordable across a diversity of budgets and technical skill sets. Caucuses, for example, exist because they are dead easy to explain, don't cost any money, and are transparent at least so far as everyone can see who won just by looking around the room.
As far as transparency, that's sort of the main point of the paper: if everyone can themselves check the votes by doing something as simple as looking at something like bc.info, then that imo is a large increase in transparency from the current system which only allows the room-members themselves to verify the results. I agree with you that caucuses in their current form are easy to explain, however I think we can abstract away all the difficult parts and make it a pleasant / easy experience.
Let's not forget "Schmidt was an informal advisor and major donor to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and began campaigning the week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate." [2]
I'm sure some people internal [to Google] know more about this, but from my understanding there was a push to use internal technologies (ads/etc) as a force for campaigning...
1 http://www.androidcentral.com/google-search-will-keep-you-da...
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt
I am for some reason under the impression that Dems are more favorable for the tech sector, since they're relatively more lax on security, and that the American right tends do be somewhat anti-tech to please the older demographic (examplary anecdata is that /r/the_Donald have a serious beef with Google and Facebook)
It's very possible that the causality is reversed and the right is reacting to a tech's Democratic bias.
I wonder if this is somewhat based in reality or just my wrong hunch.