> Only the owner knows, unless they choose to reveal to others.

Which means the owner can be forced to reveal their vote to a spouse/boss/warlord.

I could have been clearer that that is what I meant.

Yes, that makes more sense and I think that's a valid point, thanks.

To be fair I thought you meant that it couldn't be kept secret from a global view - that anyone who wanted could look at the blockchain and attach votes to identities.

The overwhelming majority of the population doesn't have the capacity to understand what you wrote or why that is true. Even the majority of those who understand why it may be true, cannot say for certain that it is true without inspecting the codebase and its operation. That's a major problem.

I mean, you could say the same thing about current electronic voting or even about how aggregate paper voting is counted behind the scenes. Those things involve some level of trust.

I don’t think what I wrote is that difficult to understand. I think you’re underestimating people when you say “the overwhelming majority of the people do not have the capacity to understand what you said.” Really? Not even the capacity to understand?

In any case, the trust involved for a blockchain-based voting system with pseudonymity is much less than the other systems, because they can be 3rd-party audited, or even open source. And that auditing only needs to happen once rather than for each local vote collection method.

Explaining to the end-user is just a matter of communication. That’s not a “major problem.” People don't need to know how a blockchain works just like they don't need to know how UPS works. They just need to know that they're able to place a vote anonymously and verify themselves later if they want to.

In most democratic nations everybody can volunteer to be present at counting. This is in itself a control mechanism, as it would be highly unlikely that meaningful voting fraud would be carried out under the eyes of the observers from multiple parties without anyone making a ruckus.

This is an effective mechanism which apparently convinces enough people that the votes are legitimate.

With blockchain you would have to: - have them understand blockchain algorithms - have them understand computers (so they understand why blockchain might be safe here) - have them understand networking technologies - convince them all of that (and no more/less) is on the actual machines on voting day, for every vote

Have you ever tried explaining what an URL is to your parents? Or how passwords are stored? I am positively convinced that not an insignificant amount of the electorate would just say "there was some hack" when things didn't go their way. And they don't even need to show you proof, because you won't be able to proof the opposite because they won't understand it.

Ultimately to me the benefits of a blockchain system don't really show. It is far to complicated and has too many moving parts.

> Really? Not even the capacity to understand?

Yup. I'm pretty sure most software engineers don't even know how something as basic as hashing works. They just put lego blocks together, without much understanding of even how those lego blocks work.

When it comes to traditional voting, it's fairly easy to understand. You cast your vote, then someone counts them. You don't care how they count it, even if it's with an aid of a machine. You just care that you cast, someone fairly counts.

With a blockchain, there is no person involved and there is no counting. You vote and some piece of software that most software engineers don't even understand tells you who won. That is really not going to engender trust from anyone, not even software engineers.

I work on blockchains all the time and even I wouldn't trust that thing. Good luck convincing someone who doesn't even know how to reboot their iPhone.

Or if they are forced to reveal it under duress, or they choose to reveal it to get paid for the result, etc.

Did you stop reading right at the end of the part you quoted?

Yes, not sure how it's related.

if you can verify your vote after it has been counted, you can be induced by a third party to vote for a specific candidate

Yeah, I think it wasn't clear to me as being the point said in the line in question. Guess I can see it now.