Elon Musk calls for an end to electronic voting.
(twitter.com)
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I think I have the basics of how blockchain is supposed to work, thank you, but there are still issues in my mind.
If we start from the vending machine example. The machine would know the ID was unique but how would it know it was you? Anyone, even another machine could enter that ID. If it really does know it is you what happened to secret ballots. If your vote can be traced back to you then we have another type of problem.
If people vote from their own machines then that creates all kinds of issues with blackmail and coercion. There could be anonymity issues and the current issue of people being dead or in the wrong jurisdiction etc still exist.
Going round every vending machine is not necessarily an issue. It all depends on how long it takes to update them. Unless there is a Proof-of-Work type concept then all machines could be updated almost immediately.
Then we have Proof-of-Work issues. If it takes a long time to pack the transactions into a block then the whole election system across the country could be held up. The other issue is the random choosing of machines to perform the mining. Suppose a Google-sized server farm joined the P2P network. That would get most of the blocking jobs so would be a good place to plant any exploit. 51% Exploits are already a known issue.
Before individual transactions are added to a block aren't they vulnerable?
Thanks to your helpful persistence, I have found some articles on blockchains and I could now write a basic one although the networking aspect is still a mystery.
I believe that each county's ballot could be different so that means that nearly 3,000 different front ends will be required for the US.
Rather than pursuing the details, we can also start at the other end. For instance, has any blockchain system been hacked? Has BitCoin or Etherium ever lost any money?
People have an interest in keeping copies of the database if they have money in it so auditing can be performed but I don't think people will be quite as interested in clogging up their machines with an entire US election database so they will get deleted and that will leave the big players in control of the data.
Even if people did check their votes, would they spot the difference between a vote for Trump and a vote for Trսmp? (Clue: the "u" is not a "u" in the second one.)