USPS patent for reliable voting system secured with blockchain
This is an attempt to solve a human problem with a technical solution.<p>Our election trouble in the US boils down to corruption, and I will be blunt:<p>The people responsible for trustworthy elections aren&#x27;t interested.  Where they are, simple, time tested, production proven ways and means work just fine and are very robust.<p>Trust starts with people being involved in the civics.  Every layer of complexity comes with both a barrier to trust and an opportunity to exploit the process to control the election outcome.<p>Electronic voting started out this way.<p>So far, no scheme has even made economic sense.  At any given time and population size, there are always people available for the civics.<p>Paper has one property no electronic system has presented to date:<p>The chain of trust between voter intent and the record of their vote is unbroken.  When we mark media, we record a direct expression of voter intent and that expression is used directly to determine the final tally, and with that, the election outcome.<p>Electronic votes are votes by proxy.  Voters must trust the tech to interpret and maintain the accuracy of their vote intent.  This, by nature, is untrustworthy given we don&#x27;t actually need to vote by proxy in the vast majority of cases.<p>This is all exacerbated by voter anonymity and freedom to vote or not.  Having both of those in play highlight the dynamic nature of electronic records.<p>Flat out, this problem is not well aligned to technology.<p>Getting people involved and insuring elections embody these ideas to the maximum possible is how we run trustworthy elections:<p>--Freedom to vote or not.<p>--Anonymity, no vote shall be personally identifiable to the person who cast it.<p>--Transparency.  The law, means, ways, methods, shall be visible to all impacted by the election.  It should be simple to understand how an expression of voter intent is recorded and followed through to the final tally.<p>--Oversight.  Not only must the law, process means and methods allow for public involvement, this must be encouraged and actually done and discussed.  Legitimacy is made or broken here.<p>These are all human problems, not technological ones.<p>Human solutions are in use all over the world.<p>The US stands fairly unique in both its general denial about the state of its elections and ongoing efforts to fix human problems with ever increasingly complex technology that does not get at the root causes.<p>People need to be involved.  The process needs to be simple, robust, records available, human readable in a court of law and leaders need to lead by example and cultivate trust and people involvement.