What problems are we solving?
Opened this issue · 2 comments
This really should be the first question - what problems with current election mechanism would distributed voting system solve? Just to make sure we are not building an solution to a non-existent problem.
There are 2 main problems we're aiming to solve, corruptibility and expense.
The way elections are handled right now, there are many single-points-of-failure in terms of security. Everything from centralized servers to individuals paid minimum-wage to transcribe votes by hand (yes really) exists in the voting system of the US. When there is a dispute about an election the only recourse is a re-count or a re-vote, both of which are then still nearly as corruptible as the original.
Elections are expensive. Election machines have to be purchased, verified, and shipped. Thousands of voting locations have to be found, set up, staffed and guarded. Remember those re-counts and re-votes? Those incur many of these costs again.
What we'd like to build is a free or less expensive system server that allows every citizen who so chooses to download and run it and be able to have their own up-to-the minute (or 10 minutes as it may be) record of the election. Every server can verify with every other that their results are the same, and with far fewer single-points-of-failure (there are still some in the ballot supply chain).
1- Cost. - 10$ per ballot is the estimated cost for all political votes across the nation.
2- The re-count or re-do of vote is almost infeasible due to this cost.
3- To allow for direct accountability between an elected official and their constituents.
4- No single entity should be trusted with the systems integrity.