Anonymous, secure and auditable crypto voting

[pmbug]

I'm honestly not sure which forum to post this in - it touches on several topics/themes.

Vladimir Putin just won his fifth term as Russian president, though the 87% landslide election victory has been labeled preordained, stage-managed and a farce.

Now, exiled opposition leader Mark Feygin is leading an effort to give Russians an anonymous, blockchain-powered way to register a "protest vote" against Putin.

The results of this effort would, of course, have no legal weight in Russia and would not end Putin's presidency per se, but the referendum could, in theory, give a public relations boost to efforts to oust him. And it gives Russians a way to voice criticism in a nation where the consequences of dissent can be high; opposition leader Alexei Navalny recently died while jailed in an Arctic penal colony.

The vote will be conducted on an app called Russia2024, built using Rarimo’s Freedom Tool, which will use the Arbitrum blockchain and zero-knowledge cryptography, making voters' identities untraceable.

“Dissent in Russia is growing more risky and public opinion harder to track,” Feygin said in a statement. He was exiled from Russia years ago, termed a foreign agent in 2022 and remains a wanted person in Russia. He is a former lawyer for the founders of the protest collective Pussy Riot. “It is critical that we provide reliable, surveillance-proof avenues for protest and polling. Russia2024 and its underlying technology has enabled that,” he added.

Only holders of Russian passports will be able to cast their vote. Around 34.6 million Russians have a valid passport.

Users will need to download the Russia2024 app and prove their citizenship by scanning their passports with their phones. The passports have a biometric chip that the tool uses to confirm the voter's identity and facilitate an anonymous vote. If a person doesn’t own a smartphone, a single phone can be used as a shared voting machine.

Voting will be allowed for about two weeks, and the backers behind the tool are “sure” it is a secure way to vote and that voters don't need to fear repercussions.
...

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/202...d-referendum-on-vladimir-putins-election-win/

Arbitrium is a layer 2 blockchain that is built on Ethereum. Gas fees run about .01 GWEI which is equivalent to about 0.7 cents.

Freedom Tool is a Rarimo-built open-source software for citizen-run, anonymized elections and polls. It has solved the long-standing technical challenge of enabling digital identity checks while also protecting citizens from tracking. Anyone, anywhere, can use it to build voting systems outside of state apparatus. This will provide safe outlets for silenced people to express dissent and is part of a broader effort to embed privacy into the digital world.
...
With Freedom Tool, citizens prove their eligibility by scanning their biometric passports with their phones. Freedom Tool verifies the data on the NFC chip inside the passport and after confirming that it is legitimate issues an anonymous voting pass. The citizen then uses this pass to cast their vote.

Zero-knowledge cryptography is used to sever any link between the voting pass and the passport data so that the two cannot be paired. When the ID and the voting pass cannot be paired, neither can the citizen and their vote.

Privacy is further ensured by the fact that it is only the voting pass that interacts with any external voting apparatus. The passport data never leaves the mobile device used for scanning. This means that the data never passes through a server, and that there are no points where it could be intercepted.

Freedom Tool uses blockchain to protect votes from rigging. All votes are published directly onto the blockchain where they are both tamper-proof and publicly auditable.

A more detailed technical description can be found here in the White Paper.
...

https://medium.com/@rarimo/introducing-freedom-tool-15709e9eaa73

What would it take to get a State or two here in the USA to test out and potentially adopt a voting system like this?

 

[pmbug]

https://x.com/pmbug/status/1799051383116845372

 

[ClaytonB]

On this one, I'm going to go with paper-ballots as the correct option.

It is true that crypto algorithms exist to enable elections that are secure (ID verified), anonymous (no one can discover your vote, nor can you prove what you voted to anyone), and verifiable (can check after-the-fact that each vote had a valid ID associated with it when it was cast, etc.) The mathematics behind it is somewhat mind-melting, especially for people unfamiliar with how public-key cryptography works. But it's valid maths.

That said, the problem we have right now is that our election systems are already "too clever" and the Clowns thrive in an environment with lots of cleverness. It gives them many places to hide, because no real-world system can be mathematically secure end-to-end. There is always a way to spoof / fake / hack, etc. because these systems have black-box components, and those are always the entry-points that the Clowns use to hack in and swap out results and stats to suit their Agenda.

So, for now, we just need paper-ballots. We need good, old-fashioned "too dumb to fail" systems. The CIA was able to insert spy chips in the electronic typewriters used by many foreign governments (this was in the 1970's, IIRC). Iran got caught with their pants down and, to my knowledge, they use mechanical typewriters for all security-critical government communications to this day. That's symbolic of what the American public needs to do in 2024. Sure, one day, after we get our Republic put back on a solid footing, we can roll out some fancy-schmancy cryptographic voting protocol with all kinds of convenience features and provable security properties. But now is not the time for that. Right now, we need mechanical typewriters. We need paper-ballots and in-person voting, with suitable proof of right-to-vote, in every jurisdiction, no exceptions. The Clown parade needs to be shut down. Then we can think about other solutions later on...