Its a distributed ledger. As long as someone solves accurately, cheaply and efficiently the problem of double spend in a distributed ledger, without compromising the distributed nature or the security and anonymity, it would be a HUGE deal.
If not a distributed ledger, the only other option is (as far as my brain can think), an offworld Ledger where the entries are stored and protected from tampering by an benign off world entity
Well yes and no. The cryptography is such that if you change entries in past the hash will no longer match and thus you'll be able to tell the block was changed. And since the blocks are "chained" then that would invalidate all blocks after the one that was modified. But, yes, if you have only a single copy maintained by an unscrupulous entity they could change past entries and recompute the hashes and update those also.
However, still not convinced blockchain, or maybe more correctly a distributed blockchain is that useful. People have suggested we need blockchain to secure our elections. How would that help? If someone wants to flip votes from Biden to Trump they can still do it. You can just commit the fraud before reporting. You can even commit the fraud after reporting as any ledger will need a mechanism for applying adjustments. So I correctly record 85 votes for Trump and 15 for Biden. Then someone decided to flip those and reports -85 for Trump and -15 for Biden and then records 85 for Biden and 15 for Trump.
Equating blockchain with the trickery that is Dominion and Smartmatic will not lead you to the answer.
Okay, who has successfully hacked the direct blockchain to "flip votes" from one address to another? I'll wait right here to learn your answer.
For that matter, why isn't it a trivial matter to "flip votes" from one banking account to another? That system cannot be more secure than online voting by Dominion, can it? Dominion is the most solid and trustworthy accounting system on the planet, just ask the CEO. /s
Its a distributed ledger. As long as someone solves accurately, cheaply and efficiently the problem of double spend in a distributed ledger, without compromising the distributed nature or the security and anonymity, it would be a HUGE deal.
If not a distributed ledger, the only other option is (as far as my brain can think), an offworld Ledger where the entries are stored and protected from tampering by an benign off world entity
Yeah, the distributed part I don't consider as a big deal.
But that’s the reason why you can be sure that the past entries have not been changed
Well yes and no. The cryptography is such that if you change entries in past the hash will no longer match and thus you'll be able to tell the block was changed. And since the blocks are "chained" then that would invalidate all blocks after the one that was modified. But, yes, if you have only a single copy maintained by an unscrupulous entity they could change past entries and recompute the hashes and update those also.
However, still not convinced blockchain, or maybe more correctly a distributed blockchain is that useful. People have suggested we need blockchain to secure our elections. How would that help? If someone wants to flip votes from Biden to Trump they can still do it. You can just commit the fraud before reporting. You can even commit the fraud after reporting as any ledger will need a mechanism for applying adjustments. So I correctly record 85 votes for Trump and 15 for Biden. Then someone decided to flip those and reports -85 for Trump and -15 for Biden and then records 85 for Biden and 15 for Trump.
Equating blockchain with the trickery that is Dominion and Smartmatic will not lead you to the answer.
Okay, who has successfully hacked the direct blockchain to "flip votes" from one address to another? I'll wait right here to learn your answer.
For that matter, why isn't it a trivial matter to "flip votes" from one banking account to another? That system cannot be more secure than online voting by Dominion, can it? Dominion is the most solid and trustworthy accounting system on the planet, just ask the CEO. /s