Tomorrow is the most important day in politics, in Finland, kind of. It is the election of the new President. The President is the head of state but, it is the Prime Minister who is the practical head. Since I am foreign, I am unable to vote anyway.
My wife however has been around politics in some way or another for almost two decades (I know, I know 'Anarchy!' and all that) and is interested in these things. Even though she is now a full-time student again, tomorrow she volunteered to be a vote counter at one of the polling stations.
Finland is one of the least politically corrupt countries in the world which is kind of like ranking the goodness of serial killers by how few people they killed. Overall however, the voting process is safe but also very expensive to organise. Less so than places like the US however where people are what many outside of the US would consider, 'politically insane'.
I don't mean who they vote for although that is often questionable, I mean the entire voting process where access to polling stations by location, day and service numbers is so easy to game. I mean, come on, this is the age of smartphones and blockchains yet it seems that we are still living in the relative voting dark ages.
If there is a major conspiracy around elections worth investigating, the snail-paced crawl of voting technology and ease of manipulation is it. Seriously, busloads of voters being driven around to various booths and in some places 4 hour waits while in others it is 15 minutes?
The Steem chain (or a version of) could quite easily handle all of the transactions and be able to have all data immediately accessible without anyone needing to leave their home. Sure, there are limitations currently on much older generations but for most between the ages of 18 and 70, a simple app would be enough to cover an entire country's voting process. There are numerous ways to implement this of course.
Sure, 'Down with the governments!' but currently, this is the system we operate within so cleaning it up and making it more accessible to those who have stake (everyone) should be high on the agenda...Shouldn't it?
In the 2016 US elections 138 million people voted, that is 58% of those eligible, so, who didn't? Well, some people don't vote for many reasons but would you stand out in the cold and wet for hours on a Tuesday (Seriously Tuesday still?) while you should be working at one of your two or three jobs? It shouldn't be so difficult, we have online banking after all, we should be able to work this mess out.
Now, the problem with low voter turnout which is skewed by access to polling stations and a host of other factors is that , it isn't representative at all. It means that 42 percent of people with stake, didn't use it and those 42 percent often lay largely in certain communities.
In Finland, the turn out is around 70 percent which in my opinion is still too low. In a country that has one of the highest educated populations in the world, it is still the lowest educated who are underrepresented. Some might think this is a good thing that they do not have a say but, in time, they can become an uneducated, disenfranchised force that want to burn it all without the sensitivity for which parts to keep. That is another post perhaps though.
Australia has compulsory voting but, it is still cumbersome and unwieldy to use and expensive to operate and police. Just think about all of the security required at the various voting booths around the world, especially in countries in turmoil where it is possible to threaten voters at the stations or encourage them to stay home altogether.
Perhaps, all voters should be able to vote from the comfort of their home and it need not even be on the day, just like a post here, there could be a voting window and once the post closes, the election is decided. We already do this here.
Maybe there could be portals for each candidate where a candidate can represent themselves, specialists can verify the information and give opinions, and the public can also have their say if they choose. And, candidates information is all immutable on the blockchain as are those who are looking to influence the outcomes in some way.
Wouldn't it be interesting if only funds that have been logged onto the blockchain are usable for campaigning? Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a set amount of personal data that must be presented and logged onto the chain if running for president of a country?
There are too many grey areas to hide in places where there need not be, there are too many opportunities to game the system and manipulate a population when there are solutions now available that will immediately stop this or prevent future issues.
Corruption at government levels is the worst kind as they are meant to be working in the best interest of the people. They are public servants. Sure, not everyone is going to agree with how everything is handled but the arguments shouldn't be hijacked by irrelevancies and smoke and mirrors. There should be a higher level of transparency and immutability of information over long periods of time.
If there ever was a use case for blockchain that will revolutionize society, a solution that simplifies and ensures reliability of voting process information is it. Whoever solves these issues and offers the solution first is going to get some of the largest government buyout offers in history but, they need not sell. They can offer the service in a decentralised form to further safeguard against manipulation.
I do not know of all the technical requirements and considerations at this point but, it is absolutely possible to create a better system that can be utilised by any willing country using fractions of what they currently spend. I wonder how many would actually be willing to do this though considering the amount of control it gives over their populations?
Just think if implemented, it would really take begging for votes and link dropping to a whole new level.
Upvote my nomination for President post, please sir. It is the best nomination, everyone thinks so. Just ask anybody. The best.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
There is one big problem with such a step. It either makes elections easier to manipulate fraudulently or it makes them non-anonymous which in turn can lead to all kinds of problems like vote selling and pressuring people to vote in a certain way for them to keep their jobs. In my opinion, that's the biggest problem with digital voting. If it's anonymous (and I think voting should be), doing digitally makes it too easy to manipulate.
If there is a solution that can be both secure and anonymous, it would be the best possible solution. Maybe there is some complex cryptographic way to give everybody private keys and then have them vote without revealing their identity and be able to somehow check if their vote has been included in the total with a hash or something?
I only have a moment as alone with the baby who is a little demanding today but, I would assume that if there was a unique key provided for a voter that was known (connected to the voter. When it is used it can be burned. But, the vote it casts randomizes the information and disconnects it from the voter. That way, it is possible to know if the key voted but, not how it voted.
I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to work 100% and I'll consult with google on this topic too, but this sounds like a system that is prone to abuse. If the keys are burned, how do you check that the vote wasn't fraudulent. When issuing keys, you need to check that the voter indeed has a right to vote and hasn't gotten another key already. That's a single point of failure where somebody could issue additional keys and having keys burned (though that's the part I'm not sure I understand) means you wouldn't be able to catch them.
Have a great day with your baby! :)
I hade the same thoughts when I read the post.
I often think about that idea and how much more comfortable would it be for people that want to vote. For me to vote in the elections i normally have to drive 20 minutes to the nearest booth, then if i'm lucky i will only wait 15 minutes on line and then drive back home, so in total 1h minimum that i take. If i could vote online safely, 5 minutes would be enough. The advantages of your proposal would be the reduction of costs and more people would vote since its easier and they wouldn't waste time. The disadvantage would be the insecurity and the possibilty of manipulation but i think there are ways to counteract that and i think in the future some version of online voting for elections will be possible.
The reason elections never adopt technology at the front line is that people have the perception that it's easier to manipulate technology to rig elections. And even though block chain would offer transparency, elections are meant to have a layer of anonymity. And yes there are privacy based block chains, but you'd have to convince the masses, that don't know anything about the technology, that this is safe from malicious penetration.
this is a cut and paste from what I answered to @rocking-dave's comment:
I only have a moment as alone with the baby who is a little demanding today but, I would assume that if there was a unique key provided for a voter that was known (connected to the voter. When it is used it can be burned. But, the vote it casts randomizes the information and disconnects it from the voter. That way, it is possible to know if the key voted but, not how it voted.
There must be multiple ways to do this and it has got to be safer than being able to send a friend in to vote for you and have your name crossed off the list even though they are of the opposite sex... I am not saying that anyone I know did this of course ;)
Oh technically there are plenty of ways that it can be done. But then you have to convince the world that it's tamper proof.
To convince me, the technology would need to be open source with publicly available block chain, but then there's a lot of people that might still not be convinced...
i had no information about the Finland presidential election, i want to ask about why don't you have the right to vote even as i saw in some of your post you are 15 years no in Finland so when will you able or you will never be able to vote?
I am a permanent resident, only citizens are allowed to vote in national elections. I can vote in the local council ones only.
aha i got it thank you
God, the voting system was not perfect even in your country. The fact that my country is divided into two parts, the Crimea is lost - our voting system is to blame. When people do not believe in fair elections and take weapons to protect their voice. I believe that elections should be conducted via the Internet. When a young person is issued a passport, he must receive a card to access the electronic voting system. As in the banking system: access to the deposit only on the card. Elections in Ukraine: people go to polling stations, vote for their candidate. The commission considers the votes, and everything is correct, but it is done by people who allegedly mistakenly accept and transfer other data to the center.
Voting for a separate Donetsk republic was a perfect farce. Voter lists were not compiled. A group of people went from town to town and voted. There were so-called carousels: the same people voted and created the impression that the majority of the population voted for the republic. People who did not live in the Crimea voted to join Russia. Who is it? Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes
yes, I am quite sure that there are many countries who do not want a cleanup of the voting processes.
We should vote for ideas, not for representitives
This is another thing completely but is a long way off unfortunately.
That's direct democracy.
If you ask me, people as a majority don't always know what is best. A lot of the biggest human advances wouldn't have happened because the masses would never have voted them. We need Representatives because they can make unpopular decisions for the good of the people.
What I think does need to change though, is this concept of parties. You vote for a representative, and they don't really represent you. They represent their parties. So you end up having to pick between very few (in many countries only two) parties that are probably all heavily influenced by lobbyist.
I guess you could say that political landscapes are centralised, and need to be decentralized.
Amen. Well said. Surely not many actually truly believe that one party or person will be able to accurately represent all of our personal views about issues of government whilst also not buckling to political corruption or being driven out of government. There is no need to throw truckloads of dollars at an endless string of political "leaders" (even well after their term and into their retirement here in Australia). Voting on a leader and expecting them to be able to speak for millions seems extremely outdated and more than slightly naive. Voting on issues and ideas is the only real democracy, and it really can't be corrupted more than the current system with the tools we now have at our disposal.
If the United States is the strongest country in the world to choose its president without its people, how can small nations allow its people to choose its president? Elections are always very deliberate. And we see it as a democracy and we have the right to choose our president .. This corruption the world today. We now have a difficult dream to achieve: freedom from the biggest corrupt regime. We want to have a world in which the right of humanity and the right to live are right. It became our right dream .. I wish you a good president who feels his people and loves his country .. I wish you good always my dear brother @tarazkp
DECENTRALIZE EVERYTHING DAMMIT!
UPVOTE SIR I SUPPORT
Absolutely everything. Decentralize it all! It is the solution to every problem humanity faces.
;)
But if we fixed voting in this completely sensible and logical way, then we wouldn't get to have all the awesome controversies and accusations of voter fraud! That just wouldn't be any fun, now would it?
But, there is still Kanye.
A blockckain could well store the votes, it is the possible hacking or other manipulation of the votes before they reach the blockchain that could be a problem. This is also why some countries reverted to paper/pencil voting from counting machines on which a voter just pushed a button. Where there's software, there's a risk.
Is the risk higher or lower than the mess that currently goes on where large swaths of the political media coverage is around voting controversies and the like. There are always ways to manipulate but at least having it on a blockchain they are somewhat traceable.
Perhaps a one use key gets mailed to all voters prior to the election, or a text message, or bank signin numbers get used... Lots of various ways to limit gaming.
No such voting controversies in The Netherlands. Organising things well goes a long way (long opening hours for voting, vote wherever you like, many voting stations, paper record of every vote, and so on). Better to get that down pat first, then maybe try to automate. It's not as bad as all that everywhere.
Yes I know, Finalnd is relatively simple and well organised also but, it is still an expensive process that could be automated.
I wish you the best for Finland
@tarazkp
I love this! Strong argument and delivery. As we contemplate blockchain voting, I think it is important that we step back and ask ourselves what are we voting on.
The latter I am personally most interested in. I would love to see people voting on the issues that they are most interested in. It would be also important for people to have opportunities for even more active roles than simply voting.
True, this would all require an informed and engaged citizenry. I see the seeds being sown with the citizen journalist movement brought upon by the Q Posts.
I bet we at Steemit have ideas on that as well :)
Rock on!
Yep for sure. I think it would be great if we would vote as a country on things that are not being addressed by the existing political system or should not be making the decision. E.g., DAPL pipeline, constraining AI, where we draw the line with any technology, and how to deal with the cabal once the storm clears. LOL
The most important thing is an informed populace.
Yes yes yes! I think that having elections this transparent, AND having information be readily available to ALL citizens and not corruptible will inherently change the nature of government. One of the functions of government originally was to keep records. And government also controlled access to information. Increasing transparency and accessibility of voting and information will certainly mean that things could change.
Nice post beautiful presented and explained. detail oriented with nice information. thank you for sharing
read some of the other comments here and consider changing your approach.
Great reminder thanks for the post,i had to upvote please do same for mine thanks
Thanks for the reminder that comments such as this are unhealthy for the platform. I think I am just going to exercise my voting rights and give it a small flag. If you want to engage people, this is not the way and there is a lot of information telling you so and a lot of information that would help you improve.
Am still new to the platform and i have little knowledge of it,so sorry if you feel offended.
Asking for votes is not looked on kindly, neither is commenting with no relevancy to the post. I will remove the flag but before commenting further, you should do some reading about the platform. Start with the FAQ: https://steemit.com/faq.html
Great post keep it up dear @tarazkp
These comments are useless. Start reading about engaging better please.
https://steemit.com/faq.html
Finland is among the least corrupt countries in the government system, and elections are often serious and with high voting ratings
Probably the problem is how to verify real-people votes and ghost votes.
Do you online bank?
No :) , but I'm assuming banks regularly check the status of the person? In my country, candidates often use already dead people to cast on votes
I volunteered to help in the voting process in the US 2004 elections in NYC. Nothing has changed since then except you use pen and paper to vote and then scan it, instead of those outdated mechanical voting booths with levers to punch a hole in the ballots.
When I voted in 2012 they were using the same system to verify voters. Ask their name, look it up, and have them sign the book next to their name. As I was waiting to be verified the book was left open in plain sight and I could read several names and addresses. I could have said any of those names and stole someone else's vote. If they came later they wouldn’t have been able to vote. Or if they proved who they were there was still no way to take back the vote from earlier.
By 2016 I was in Michigan. They required ID in my locality but I’m pretty sure that was not practiced everywhere.
I’m with you on moving voting to the blockchain. And if a candidate uses steemit they can fund their campaign. It would be awesome to be able to downvote a candidate.
A friend and I were recently chatting about that idea. Blockchain voting (voting on ideas and issues in the conversation we were having, rather than representatives). The rough model we ended up at is that voting on most issues or ideas should not be compulsory but be a privilege earned through proof of knowledge and experience within fields pertaining to the given idea or issue. Due to the very nature of said model, it would probably extend out of some kind of blockchain system of transparent public domain and openly peer reviewed and debated tertiary online education knowledgebases so that people could choose to actively learn about relevant aspects of voting topics easily.
For raising new ideas or issues, it would also probably be linked to a wikibase of some kind which transparently holds the blockchain information regarding what happened to similar ideas and issues in the past, and an AI of some kind would assist to filter new ideas from ideas which have already been addressed or concluded, and ideas which draw legitimate reason to re-address old ideas.
Our conclusion has been said a bunch of times in comments here already: due to the level of potential for this system of democratic voting to be integrated into the rest of the blockchains likely to be around in the future (education, finance, medical, immigration, social services, etc); to do the job properly will require considerable time, planning, massive data communications and power infrastructure upgrades, and it will likely be heavily reliant on complex AI for the purpose of collating and sorting information. We'll be waiting quite a while for it to get to its full potential but if we're persistent and we start small by designing models which address local election levels (which various countries currently are) then it's simply a matter of time before it expands and becomes fruitful and truly democratic. The trick will be to push past digital voting for candidates and strive on towards a small scale system which works for ideas and issues in the face of massive opposition from those who stand to loose power, influence, and wealth.
Very interesting article and many sensible comments.
Please let me answer you and some of the commenters in one post here.
Instead of steem you can use https://www.democracy.earth
They already work on a platform for voting with use of blockchain.
They also implement great concept of Liquid Democracy (LQDM) I strongly support. This is a mixture of the best features of direct and indirect democracies. System for XXI century and beyond.
There are also other platforms like Liquid Feedback and others however they do not use DLT (but someone told me you can verify if the database is not corrupt by comparing to yours, I'm not sure of that info). I think Liquid Feedback was already used by Pirate Party in Germany.
Both above systems have not only voting but also discussion panels that you can use to post your idea, show support and argue. If I'm not mistaken the democracy.earth allows for secret voting so preserves the privacy.
LQDM takes care of corruption you mentioned. You can vote yourself or your delegate can vote - you can take back the delegation any time and you can change the vote that belonged to you and was cast by your delegate - no room for lobbyists and groups of power to corrupt anyone.
@farq said "We need Representatives because they can make unpopular decisions for the good of the people." - the right way in my opinion is to educate people and being one community decide together. There are hard choices- for example: increase the manufacturing costs (international competition) and decrease your living standards by tax on carbon in order to save the environment and prevent global warming?.... Discuss, educate and let everybody find the best solution and decide/vote. I believe that educated society that cares for the planet and their own environment will not hesitate to do the right thing. So far, on many occasions, Representatives were doing many unpopular decisions for some small groups of power and not in the interest of the whole country.
You had very good point about the less educated. If they are underrepresented then they might feel abused. I think that for current political organization the ideal parliament distribution is very close to the society distribution. In future I hope LQDM will take care of problem of underrepresentation.
There were many discussions online that debated whether there should be obligation to vote. And I think there are many arguments on both sides. Ideally we have the society that wants to vote, that feels his/her vote is important, feels he/she is represented well. I know, I'm idealist :p
The transparency and online debates in the world full of fake news is another problem. I know that there are some Working Groups in Europe that try to tackle this issue. I have my own concept/solution that I will present here soon.
BTW: there are undertaking that we will provide us all electronic IDs by 2030. If that's true than LQDM and other systems could get more power. The problem of ensuring the voter has only one vote and cannot cheat will be solved :)