Could you use a blockchain like Bitcoin to ensure that there's no fraud?

The system is already developed and in use. http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/blockchain-voting-used-by-danish-political-party/2014/04/23

Really the idea of an internet-driven democracy is not new at all, it has been one of the main points of the Pirate Parties across Europe for quite some time, generally named "direct democracy" or "liquid democracy". I think it's the way of the future, the question is how long until that future comes to be.

I see every upvote on this comment as coming from eager smiling faces

:) Right? This has got to be the most positive-feeling comment thread I've ever seen in /r/conspiracy.

I'm moving to Denmark!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cepZIk0PlvM

That is fucking incredible

http://www.bitcongress.org/

I think it's the way of the future

Yeah, for stopping voter fraud.

In the US, we have a federal government fighting against having to show an ID to vote. They will do everything in their power to make voting as fraudulent as possible. When the government is fighting hard against giving out free picture IDs to make sure there is no fraud, you can be sure that there is.

What about voter fraud or repeat voting? How would we prevent that in this scenario?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzDO44oZWtE

replace the exchange of a bitcoin with a singular vote.

I think a new pre-mined "votecoin" would have to be created that runs on Proof of Stake and not proof of work to prevent a 51% attack.

A central entity would then send out private keys to every individual who would then be able to vote. This way people would be able to see their own vote cast, verify that it was cast properly, and verify that there were X amount of total votes.

My biggest question is how do you maintain anonymity? If you have a central authority distributing VoteCoins to registered voters, how do you ensure that they cannot then determine how every individual voted by following them through the blockchain.

Another major but often overlooked reason that there is no mechanism for verifying how a particular person voted after the fact is to prevent people from selling their votes or powerful entities from coercion (e.g. a spouse or employer demanding proof a person voted in a particular way). If there is no possible way to prove how you voted, neither of these is possible.

Also, there's no way to know if a central authority "gives out" numerous keys to himself for voting.

Proof of Stake and not proof of work to prevent a 51% attack.

Wat? Proof of stake just allows for a miner oligopoly, so instead of an insanely powerful computer being required to attack the blockchain, you just need a few corrupt holders.

Second, a 51% attack doesn't hurt vote integrity. You can't reverse votes with a 51% attack.

A few corrupt holders? If the private keys with 1 votecoin are distributed to each voting person then you'd need to get 51% of the population to collude.

Yes you cant reverse, but you can prevent some votes from being cast and disrupt the process for as long as you can sustain the attack.

Only issue there is they could give more private keys to others.

The best way of handling it would be to release a list of everyone on the voting register, listed by name and DoB as well as a hash of their voting address (something intensive). Everyone knows how many votes there should be, and it would become known if there were more votes than people.

The only issue, is if they add fake people to the list. Not sure how you'd get around that.

It is a public ledger. In something that important, you can expect anyone with the means to do so to audit the published records and call out fraud.

Correct. Not to mention a unique identifier for each voter.... I.e., voter IF which is not a popular concept in the real world.

I might be confused but are you saying that it's not a good idea for the votes to be public.

The system I'm envisioning, this might not be what op meant, would be one where every voter has a cryptographic signature and could use that to cast a vote. Post it to the "blockchain". I know this isn't exactly how bitcoin works, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. I know there are people who don't have internet access, this is another problem that needs addressing. Assuming the voting system could be developed and implemented, there would be no need for representatives, every voter has a vote. This would cut down on corruption. True democracy. But it's probably not the best system for a country the size of the US.

Reposting my idea for an an opt-in, scalable form of representative democracy:

A piece of legislation gathers signatures to come to a referendum.

You can choose to vote directly on the legislation, not vote at all, or you can "give" your vote to a trusted third party. This third party can be a friend of yours, a family member, or a politician, or a celebrity, a philosopher, a historian, a scientist. That third party then has the option to use the vote, opt out, or transfer it to another person who they trust.

So you have 5 friends and 4 of them don't really care about politics, so the 5th can be given their votes, now she has 5 votes. She can use them directly or transfer them to someone else.

To prevent fraud anyone casting more than, say, two hundred votes would have to make their voting record public.

Edit: to expand, this would be a nuanced system ideally accessible from people's mobile devices. Referendi would be tagged based on the issue, environmental, foreign affairs, economic, whatever. You could divide your representatives so I have Dan Carlin casting my foreign policy votes, and Kucinich on domestic policy maybe.

An important element of this system is that you cannot refuse the responsibility of having a vote transferred to you, you can choose not to vote, but you can't turn down the responsibility.

I fucking love Dan Carlin.

I've had a few debates on this concept already. I think the optimal answer is that you are just given your transaction ID when you vote, and you can verify it on site, but there is no binding link back to an individual person having a unique identifier. Instead, you have a database of voters, personal passwords, and a database of votes - you get checked off in the former when you vote, using some personal secret you need to keep track of.

You do, however, kind of have to maintain on-site voting to prevent physical extortion of votes from people remotely. I still don't have an answer to keep people from being compelled through force to vote a certain way if you enable remote voting, and you can't rescind votes in this model because there is no association between who voted and who they voted for (on purpose, because this prevents physical extortion of votes on site).

The whole reason for having it is to de centralise it. As soon as you add any central repository then it's no longer in the hands of the people. Granted you can use the electoral register and a public address assigned to it to get the ball rolling.

To remain anonymous you can employ dark wallet functionality so you can see your own vote and everyone can see all votes (but not who voted or they can see who voted but not which way) only of you have the private key can you get this.

You lost at "central entity". Try again

Bitcoin allows people to hold any number of identities, though. I'm not sure how you would allow just one vote per person without taking lots of personal information.

A blockchain can only verify the authenticity of a single cast vote, however, you can generate a near unlimited amount of private keys. The key to making something like this work is already mentioned above - with a web of "trusted" users vetting and verifying each other to keep the fakes down and perhaps ban bots and maybe people connected to them.

Each election, registered voters are sent 1votecoin to the address they have on file. They then send it to the address of the political candidate they are supporting.

The offchain record system (already in place by the way) allows for the replacement of lost/stolen private keys- Just like getting a new SSN, or replacement card.

Coins would need some sort of expiry so that they cannot be used in next year's election.

You expect the government to implement this? I wouldn't hold my breath.

I wouldn't either, but I think an even less likely scenario would be them following the results of an election they didn't implement.

The point isn't to follow the results of the election we're talking about here though. It's to simply shed some light on the fact that the official one might be rigged/way off what public opinion might say.

Alternatively an online "mock" election run before the actual one might consolidate votes and confidence for a third party to actually have a chance in the official election.

Get enough people to follow the results here and ignore their results they fall apart.

Who cares? Most of the population wouldn't participate in something that has no implications. The results would be skewed in favor of the kinds of people who would participate. Then those results would be used to say "see, when you make something completely open and without corruption, you get a completely different result."

Except that this is not what you'd prove. All you would prove is that an election with a non-representative set of participants will result in a winner who is non-representative of public opinion.

[deleted]

The only think is preventing people from voting more than once.. How would you do that?

This would be my concern as well. Not sure.

As long as it's transparent to the end user and they don't need to download a vote wallet or something in order to participate.

Having an internet poll is already narrowing down the demographic to people who use the internet and want to participate in such a thing (or have the spare time to). Requiring more technical ability than basic internet skills narrows down the voting demographic even further.

The more narrow the demographic of the poll, the less likely it would be taken seriously. In order for the votes to be a true reflection of the nation's opinion, even grandma needs to be able to use it.

Came here to say this. I think this whole idea is a good one, and the blockchain technology could give it some analytic legitimacy.

no not in the united states, because there is no way to verify someones identity. in ireland or iceland or somewhere there is aurora coin which works because they have a national, public id system. we have an id system in the US but its not public.

really great idea imo

they would shit their shorts if it gets traction.

It would definitely need a lot of publicity and traction to work, anyway.

As it stands, the vast majority of eligible voters would completely ignore this opportunity. You might have thousands of votes from Reddit and other online communities that allow for activism, but such a limited scope would result in an overwhelming trend toward liberal (if taken serious) or absurd (if not) candidates.

The only way to make change is to get everyone to play along, and the only way to get everyone to play along is to create the atmosphere that a conservative candidate has just as much of a chance as a liberal candidate (or else the predominantly older, male, less-technologically-adept Republican ~half of the nation will just brush this movement off as "unsubstantial and unimportant").

It would definitely need a lot of publicity and traction to work, anyway.

Not to mention a whole lot of net neutrality.

I think you are underestimating how stupid people have become. All of my friends get there news from Facebook and Twitter. All of it. They live their entire life on social media and every Buzzfeed article they can get their hands on.

Its easy to gain traction on the internet, and when it does, it goes boom real fast.

And I bet your friends are 18-25 years old, who (have access to, and) spend their time on the internet already. That is hardly a "game-changing" demographic.

Nobody will think it revolutionary or noteworthy that Millennials have invented a fake, alternate election. But if you get people outside that demographic involved, you might have a chance.

"be the change you want to see"

This is exactly the kind of fresh thought this country needs. Not an American spring where we strip power from one political party and hand it over to another one (Republican to tea party) only to have the new party hijacked by the old.

We don't need political parties. We don't need to drown in the hate and mud slinging. Party politics is nothing more than propaganda politics. We need something real.

Red versus blue is a fucking lie and it needs to be extinguished.

Thank you OP, for the breath of fresh air.

amen

We don't need political parties.

we don't need congressmen, we don't need senators and we don't need lobbyists

We need a dictatorship?

No, a monarchy dipshit. /s

It's 2014. Since the writing of the Constitution, we've invented a means of cheaply accessing the bulk of all human knowledge, ie the Internet, we've landed on the moon, and we've wiped out several diseases that have crippled our species since we first came onto the savanna.

At this point, I really don't think we need a bureaucracy of rich, old, white dudes in Virginia telling us how to live our lives.

Anarcho-communist here! We need a dictatorship of the proletariat!

That's great man. How's 9th grade?

I figure it's better than being in 10th grade.

"We need to give people a vision of what things could be like instead of telling them what wrong the current system."

I wish most people here would understand this. The goal is not to fight the system, it's to make it irrelevant and show people what freedom means.

That being said, I believe it will be hard to get any kind of major traction with this because no mass media will cover it. Additionally, if we're really want to go somewhere far-fetched, you may as well go all the way to true freedom without dictators, which of course doesn't require voting for someone to rule your life.

The traction will have to start locally, through newspapers and flyers. Handing information out at transit centers and stapling them to telephone poles would seem to be a decent start. These "PSA"s will only affect cities more than likely, but it might even draw some sort of media attention if there are multiple cities involved.

That being said, I believe it will be hard to get any kind of major traction with this because no mass media will cover it.

with an semi-open internet it is possible

Even as recently as the 2012 presidential elections, the media did a good job at not letting Ron Paul through. His following was more than before, but still a tiny percentage of the population.

What OP needs to realize is that many will be on board, but also understand that it will attempt to be co opted from the start (the CIA and FBI are masters at this), if it hasn't already, and know that many probably even already think it's a honeypot.

The best thing to do though is to just do it. Fuck it all, just do it.

Also: net neutrality is goinf away - our rulers are one step ahead of us.

Can we prevail?

It's a bit of both. If it's not broken why fix it?

Maybe.. probably not but dog coin or whatever got plastered on a NASCAR because of this place.

A voting system based on bitcoin could work. Everyone would be distributed addresses with 1 satoshi each, and then they could send the bitcoin to the address associated with a candidate or law they want to support. The one with the most satoshis by some cut off date wins.

Anonymous, traceable, nearly frictionless, unable to coerce people not to vote....

I like it. However, you have to find a way to get the satoshis to all (and only) eligible voters. The vast majority of these people would have literally no idea how to vote with their satoshi.

Despite these issues, you'd probably still get a fairer result than rigged ballet boxes.

Cryptovoting is definitely possible, and easier when you simply create a new "coin" that say limits itself to 1 whole unit/address generated. The problem arises, as you suggested, when you have to account for a trustworthy registration process to ensure no one receives more than 1 address.

You only need to tokenize a user and have the back end handle satoshi transfer. So user A logs in after being vetted:

Transfer one satoshi to a new address for user A, or directly to user A if they provide an address themselves.

User A picks a candidate and their address (generated by system or their own address) sends one satoshi to predetermined address [of candidates].

Since all addresses are accounted for and relatively anonymous, this would prevent fraud so long as your tokenizer were secure for the login pair assigned to each "vetted voter"

We already have voting registries. Maybe those can be used.

Love it, but 2 issues off the top of my head:

1. To most people, cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from magic. To them, you're just another guy saying, "Trust me, it's not rigged!"
2. Advertising and PR will pervert a direct democracy.

Not saying we shouldn't do it -- on the contrary, I think it's brilliant! Just some hurdles to overcome.

Embed the whole infrastructure of the code into a very user-friendly website ... Design is everything.

This! Yes. I've been saying this myself to friends. The blockchain model can be used for self-governance. I think we need to be careful, as democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding on what to eat, so I think there needs to be something foundational to society and any system of "authority."

Very related

Problem is, couldn't anyone just send 1 whole BTC and screw the whole thing up? Also, even if you forked a new coin that was not mine-able, you still have the problem of people just selling their vote to someone else.

Pretty easy, the vote tally would only account for coins that came from the addresses that the original satoshis were distributed to. The vote organizers distributed the addresses so its pretty easy to know which ones are valid. They can keep any extra bitcoin sent in by idiots.

And how would one explain this to retired senior citizen...

By making a simple UI that looks like a voting booth that hides away the fact that its running on bitcoin.

I love the idea and the work you put into this post. I think our country could do a lot to fix the system beyond voting for a president. We SHOULD have more local leaders and delegates from each district to Congress. Basically the same sort of representative democracy we have, except without the 435 member cap that was instituted in the early 1900's. The majority of our world's population growth occurred after that law was passed, so most people's voices are drowned out in favor of the 0.00045%. When I have time this summer, I'm going to write a thoughtful essay on the subject.

Brilliant! Be sure to include all the "official" candidates, too, so peiple can vote for them if they really want to. This will give a more realistic picture of the votes they might actually receive when alternatives are available.

This is a GREAT IDEA.

I don't think a straight election would work since you are still just voting for a person. It is too much like the current system to vote for a temporary king. That person will still relate to people at the top, CEOs, more than the average citizen.

What I would love to see is a voting system that replaces the act of the president signing something into law. Instead an expanding group of citizens does a straight up or down vote on everything that ends up on the president's desk. A majority either signs or vetoes the bills from Congress. As that group expanded into the millions their votes would get news coverage and highlight when the president voted in a way opposite from this independent coalition of citizens. Eventually it would be obvious that the powers that be repeatedly go against the will of the people and the people will get fed up with the "Daddy knows best" corruption we currently live under.

I don't think you would vote with bitcoin, but the underlying technology of bitcoin is perfect because every voter would store a copy of every other voters vote, ensuring voting could not be rigged.

This is called "direct democracy" and is practised in Switzerland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland

It effectively reduces politicans to secretaries.

"The internet party of America, funded by Kickstarter!" Sorry had to say it... Ill leave now.

The more obtuse and crazy sounding the better imo.

Great idea! I'd love to help in any way possible. I volunteer for wolf-pac, so I think our goals could be worked in with each other if this gains any steam. Let me know what I can do! I'll check out the site.

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.

• [/r/Anarchism] 2016 Presidential elections : What if an alternative election was held by the people for the people online even if it wasn't real. Would you support it, and shift your attention away from the illusion that we live in a country of freedom?

• [/r/Libertarian] 2016 Presidential elections : What if an alternative election was held by the people for the people online even if it wasn't real. Would you support it, and shift your attention away from the illusion that we live in a country of freedom?

• [/r/conspiratard] Because online polls are way better than actual voting

^{Respect the rules of reddit: don't vote or comment on linked threads. Questions? Message me here.}

Interesting

The entire population would not be aware of it. The requirement of computer ownership would eliminate many possible participants. And there is always the possibility of hacking. If it did become mainstream it would also become the source of more conspiracy, either because it would choose the same candidate or different ones. If a different candidate is chosen is would be used as proof of a previous conspiracy, and if it chose the same one, it would be used as proof of the vastness of the existing control.

I think this audience completely underestimates the importance of your first objection. There would be a massive amount of disenfranchised people because of the computer ownership/access issue.

The Green Party has already started a "Shadow Government" called the Green Shadow Cabinet. If you really want your idea to take off, you need to organize with people already implementing the idea.

I would support an actual election for the people.

I think it's a great idea. (I've considered it before, too.)

The key question I'm pondering is how to ensure each person gets only one vote.

You could require a registration by credit card. The vast majority of people who have multiple cards have them assigned to the same address, so a second registration with a matching name and address could be blocked.

If the credit card companies won't allow you to have a merchant account without sufficient transaction activity, you could "charge" people $1 to register and refund it when they vote.

This would allow the banks to shut the system down anytime they like and not verify anyone rendering the system useless.

Who says this "online election" couldn't cheat too?

What if an alternative election was held by the people for the people online even if it wasn't real. Would you support it, and shift your attention away from the illusion that we live in a country of freedom?

Why support something that's not real?

That being said, I wouldn't need to support or not support it or shift my attention away from the illusion that we live in a country of freedom because I haven't been under the mistaken impression that we live in a free country for...ever I guess.

I haven't been under the mistaken impression that we live in a free country for...ever I guess.

https://mediacru.sh/AvAUmE3B2O3-

wow here trophy
trophy 4 u

There are a lot of people around that think this country is a lot freer than it actually is. The downvotes you keep getting should give you at least some indication that regardless of how obvious or not being free might seem to you or me or others, TPTB and the MSM still harp on the US being "the land of the free" and "home of the brave" and all that nonsense so often and to such an extent still that a lot of people still think it's the case...even as more and more "freedoms" keep being taken away on a regular basis.

But we shouldn't do something about it?

Re: Downvotes: I'm probably getting them because I'm mocking you.

But we shouldn't do something about it?

We should absolutely do something about it. The very thing we can do about it that will most definitely work, however (i.e. putting all our petty, societally-indoctrinated racial, class, monetary, etc differences aside and coming together as the one people and one human race that we most definitely are), involves activity and a mindset that is all but entirely indoctrinated out of us from birth. As a result, we tarry about our entire lives lost in a sea of confusion for the most part, and nothing gets done or fixed on this planet.

Re: Downvotes: I'm probably getting them because I'm mocking you.

Well that's pretty stupid and not very helpful as well. You do nothing constructive in that manner.

I agree that it probably wouldn't affect much real change, but a highly publicized "mock" online election could at least get younger generations, or even politicians thinking about the way things are vs the way things could be.

It wouldn't do as much as a REAL protest, a REAL march, a REAL demonstration...a REAL sit-in at the polls where people simply stand at or near the curtain but purposefully DON'T vote.

That would be better, I feel.

I think you're probably right in a lot of ways. The problem is actually getting people out of their house to do something. I think you'd have much less difficulty actually getting participation with something digital in this day and age, and while I long for a good old fashioned protest, I think some action is better than none.

The problem is actually getting people out of their house to do something

Yes. That's correct...and that is the big problem indeed. It relates somewhat to response B here where I said, "it's hard to protest en mass when we're generally living in first world luxury from all the richest we keep stealing off everyone else."

I think you'd have much less difficulty actually getting participation with something digital in this day and age, and while I long for a good old fashioned protest, I think some action is better than none.

Well-said, but at the same time, too many of us think that doing something in cyberspace, or putting in some meaningless vote in some ballot box is enough, and that alone constitutes having participated and "fighting the system!" Too many people go "Yeah! I did my part! I voted!" or "I did my part! I put up a youtube video!" and think that this suffices.

Contributing in cyberspace is indeed better than nothing, but too often things don't tend to go much further than that - and more than that would certainly need to get done if the citizenry have any hope of combating the draconian environment that is closing in upon us.

People that have accounts that are older than 3 months and have a post/comment history described above.

I might be reading this wrong, but this is what I got from it. This is rather counter intuitive, and I say that only because this can eliminate a lot of smart people who want to make a change or want to know about this.

I think this is a good idea and Im definitely interested in this. I'm sure there are plenty of people throughout Reddit that have connections to bigger platforms and could network the shit out of this to really get the word out. Get the word out to college campuses and it could spread like wildfire. If done right, I think young people could get behind this idea more than Hilary and [insert GOP candidate here].

I personally love this idea. I take some issue with your use of capitalism here: "convince the population of this country to follow a capitalistic direction instead of a democratic one."

I'm very concerned that people are looking at how fucked up everything is and they blame capitalism, which would be incorrect, as we do not live in a capitalistic society. We live under, what Chris Hedges describes as, a "soft fascism" and others say is actually fascism or corporatism, as "too big too fail" and corporate protections are fictions of the state.

That said, I believe this sort of effort and others like it are exactly what we need to be focusing on if we want to affect real change. Bravo on the great write-up.

I've been working hard doing a podcast, an instagram feed, a youtube channel, and volunteering for whowhatwhy.com. If you'd like assistance in any way, hit me up.

Good idea, except there will be people out there who'll claim the voting was rigged, skewed, or fixed. Especially since it's online based. If people make that claim, then many may deem the system unreliable or not credible.

Well, it will inherently be skewed towards politically-minded middle class or above people (internet connection required) who are fed up with the current system. It would not be accurate, especially considering that defensive voting would go out the window because it doesn't count.

Still an intriguing idea , but it seems more like an advanced voting poll, rather than anything meaningful.

I will confidently make that claim now: there is no way to verify the legitimacy of each vote in a way that makes the results meaningful.

I think its a great idea, but I'm more for supporting this cause to attempt to gain some sort of real change.

WOLF-PAC

It would be manipulated by individuals with an agenda to push, thus ruining the entire point.

I love this idea and I've been thinking about it for some time. I starting off a few years ago on this idea thinking that it would be great it there was a global mock election using youtube videos for people to run election campaigns, but now bitcoin/blockchain technology has given the idea legs. It seems like some form of blockchain voting would be the most secure. The difficult part is making sure each person only gets 1 vote.

Perhaps it could be done using some sort of public national database like national insurance numbers or something. Not everywhere has a suitable database, not everywhere even has the Internet, so maybe this experiment is best done region by region? Or should we be looking as global as possible straight away? There's little reason this new direct democracy should have anything to do with the the current and rather quaint 'national boundaries', other than for organising the voting system.

Another way to do it, or perhaps this could be part of it, would be to release an altcoin where there is a 'tax' on each transaction, say 10% flat rate on every transaction. Those coins could automatically go to an address controlled by the 'government', which now consists of all the people. People then vote on how that money is spent. No more beauocratic taxation system, no more tax evasion, no more 'disappearances' of public funds, no more unwanted wars, no more bailouts. But that's thinking a bit further a head. I'm all in for this mock election idea for now, but I hope it wont be limited to the USA as I don't live there!

Here is something related that I imagined back in 2010. It's old now, so outdated (eg it predates btc) but some of the ideas might be useful. Fwiw, I like your basic idea of side stepping the election altogether better.

http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/51913536?width=360#fullscreen

Sorry for the mobile link.

Consider also the use of chains of trust/recommendation both as the way to vouch for who is real in the election and to promote it.

E.g., we create a new crypto (votecoin) [could be btc, this is just for illustration]. When you get one, you are able to "register" by sending a tenth from the same wallet to the "registry". Plus probably some sort of social media validation to avoid sock puppets. Now you are registered and you get five "votecoins" to send to anyone you want to recommend. If three of those register, you get two more, etc.

Because everything flows from a chain of trust, if false identities show up, it is trivial in the ledger to find out who sent the original invite (and maybe trim off that entire tree).

You might want to add this - proof elections are rigged - to your post.

Please get this going! I'm not in IT (finance is my career), but would love to dedicate any time I can.

The biggest hurdle in my opinion is designing the website to be very "web 2.0" looking, something that the masses will be able to use simply but also look pretty. The reason for this is you need to appeal to someone who would be a guest on CNN, or your grandmother, or something along those lines. Don't make it for Redditors.

Keep it in the air of professionalism. You don't want it to be made a mockery of if this gains traction.

After the design elements, the security would probably be the next biggest thing. People will want to hack or dupe it for fraud very much.

If these two ideas can be solved, I think there is a VERY strong possibility that this can become something big. The media could pick it up and blow this big. They're already so obsessed with talking about 2016 that if there was a professional and respectable "web vote" going on at a fixed date with lots of interest, I believe they would be 100% into it.

Let's get something put together /u/trinsic-paridiom !!

I appreciate the focus on positivity, but I'm not sure what use this data will be? A small percentage of the population will use this, and much like the real election is skewed towards older people who are more dedicated to voting, this will be skewed towards pro-activism internet types, only to a much worse degree since the concept is even more self-selective. I like the idea in theory, but you can't even compare it against the real voting data to see what the demographic overlap is.

Not sure what the use of the results would be other than to promote the agenda that the election is essentially rigged to a two-party system, which may be true, but it is certainly not demonstrated by data like this. If it is used in that way, then to be honest, I think more than anything it would promote the stereotype many people have that conspiracy theorists will misrepresent data to make their point because they don't want to admit they were wrong about a conspiracy existing. And frankly, I can't imagine a situation in which 500,000 people vote 3/4 for Bernie Sanders and it isn't used as evidence that the election is rigged and the people want a third party candidate. They might, but that is definitely not the way you can prove it.

1. All votes have to be from US citizens. How will that be checked?

2. The type of person this experiment will attract will be skewed toward a particular political leaning. So there needs to be a representative sample from the entire population.

This is not practical.

Edit: just want to say I like your post OP and this is absolutely the direction of this sub. Personally I don't sub because it's all complaining. /r/Conspiracy needs activism.

It's a good idea, but considering the demographics that would even participate, you would get highly skewed results.

Old people wouldn't vote, poor people couldn't vote, and most of the participants would be from psycho websites.

There's a thing you learn about voting in upper-level poli sci or econ classes - as long as they're more on the empiricism/rigorous math end of the poli sci spectrum - when you cover game theory that really should change the way elections are held, but of course its never going to change for the better because that would make too much sense.

What you learn is that when votes are assigned a weight/value such that all people get 1 vote and all those votes count equally, people often made decisions based on things other than what candidate they really want to win. It becomes an internal calculus that goes something like "I really want to vote for candidate C, but my 2nd choice is candidate A, and I really don't want B to win, so I'll just vote for A to make sure B loses". The way the system is set up, it doesn't matter if we let Nader or Ron Paul debate: the average voter's fear of, for instance, McCain becoming president, outweighs their true desire for Paul or Nader to become president.

But if we instead decided that everyone's vote counts the same, but you're allowed to vote for 2 candidates, or if everyone was allowed to rank their preferences and go "1) Paul, 2) Obama, 3) McCain", the entire political system of America would change, and elections would turn out completely differently. The fear of wasting your vote would go away immediately, because you'd get to vote for your true preference and your safety vote. When they've researched this, it totally changes the behavior of voters, and its likely that most elections would've turned out differently.

It would create an electoral environment in which 3rd parties would actually have a chance in US elections, which is why its never going to happen. I mean, ask yourself: "Why is 1 person-1 vote so sacred? Why does that particular method of choosing political leaders have any more validity or imbue the winner with any more moral authority than other methods?" It doesn't, its just had the momentum of history behind it for centuries, and its outcomes are frequently less fair than other methods of election. I mean, its winner-take-all... so 49% of the 1/2 of eligible citizens who actually vote in elections actually get what they want... how is that fair?

A system where legislation relevant to your area/ gets displayed into your phone and you were able to vote/influence/get informed and see the results in real time of the population as a whole. Info pages about the legislature could be wiki style moderated to try and keep some balance. The technology is here but are we there?

...and the nest president of the United States of America is Justin Beiber. You shouldn't trust American people with elections since they already elected a movie star in the 80s. By b the way that mans name, Ronny Reagan. AmeriBurgerFats why you so dumb?

love it, let's get this a rockin!

This is a really great idea, I love the level of thought and consideration you've put into it! I hope the fact that its on r/conspiracy doesn't stop people from reading it by going into an automatic tin foil hat reactionary stance.

Unfortunately I'm not American, but I would really love to see this idea take off and spread. This seems like an almost perfect way for people to actually show how little faith there is in the current system rather than just not voting or complaining about how corrupt it all is. I'll definitely be supporting the idea in any way I can!

im in, just concerned about bot voters and programs. dont want another hacking fiasco like in flordia 2004

A sufficiently large group of people agreeing on actions essentially becomes the government.

There doesn't need to be a revolution, a third party candidate, or a new constitution. You simply provide a new online mechanism to allow people to vote and discuss in an organized and uncensored fashion. Once enough people begin to use it and trust it enough to start ceding some power to it then that "government" becomes the defacto organization in charge - globally.

The trick is getting the mechanism right to get enough people to trust it so that that population (even the initial subset of people) is willing to cede some power to it (and be given protections under a core bill of rights). A decentralized open-source network is needed (similar to a cryptocurrency network) to codify laws, with a modern and well studied voting algorithm (ie NOT the simplistic first-past-the-post voting algo that we use today). A system of CAPTCHAs to prevent bots from voting, and voila - you've just circumvented the entirety of human governments.

The efficiency and transparency of a completely open source and algorithmically driven system of laws is profound. Enforcement is automatically executed in the code meaning there is no human bias or corruptibility in enforcement. Imagine a world where there is no president - no congress. Just a population of engineers and programmers setting up laws, beta testing them, and debating the formulas in a massive decentralized network of the people.

All the electronic votes ARE rigged.

If you want this do it the classic way, make your own ballots.

A piece of paper can become a true vote, and in a democracy nothing can stop it.

I'd love to help in any way I can.

Very good idea. I wholeheartedly approve, and I hope this gets traction.

By the way, have you heard of IOPS before? If you get a chance to look into it, perhaps you might let us know what your opinion is on whether or not it might be a facilitative organization to the efforts you recommend.

http://www.iopsociety.org/

The participants (voters) would be highly self-selected and give a skewed illusion of actual popular support.

The more democratic ideal would be to have multiple scientific polls done by disinterested parties to gauge popular support for candidates at various times in the process, leading to the real election.

Oh, wait. I guess that's been tried and the results are not to your liking. Sorry.

Democracy is evil.

I think it would be a waste of time.

It would at the very least help people realize that they aren't happy with the system and that there are better alternatives of it. It would also take away from the legitimacy of the government in the minds of the people i.e. people not giving government election the respect.

i like this idea.

years ago i had the idea to give every eligible american of voting age a pager which would send messages about things to vote on.

they could enter their vote via pager and it would be tallied up and the results be given to the appropriate agency.

The internet seems a better option nowadays, but not everyone has a capable phone/internet access. Maybe an inexpensive voting device can be given out at tax payer expense, and then we can maybe eliminate the costs and waste associated with paper voting.

I like the idea of the encryption protocols (SHA or Scrypt or colored coins) being applied here.

This is awesome. It could start in January, and people would have until November 4th to submit and vote. There would be multiple "primaries" or a way of seeding out a lot of people. And if we got actual congressmen/women to do it as well it would legitimize it.

Is there any way I could help with this? PM me. :-)

There must be a way to utilize the 'blockchain' system in Bitcoin to allow for a transparent voting system.

Holy sheet; I like you.

There are clearly some issues with it, like international voters, bots, hackers, people pretending to be more than one person, etc. Although I do think this idea is worth pursuing if possible to workaround these issues.

I agree elections in the US are rigged.

However, the idea that an online poll of any kind can not and won't be gamed is an absurdity.

Thus, though I find online questionnaires occasionally amusing, I place absolutely no credibility in the statistical validity of the results of such a survey.

I would definitely vote on election day. Set it up and publicize the snot out of it. We could get more votes than cast in the stupid Tuesday, pre-register, fraud filled voter denial system in place today.

Additionally and more recently the following 2012 presidential debate coverage by Democracy Now perfectly corroborates and illustrates the points you are raising. They talk about how a private corporation actually controls our presidential debates and seeks to exclude any non-establishment candidates and can do so because they are an unaccountable private entity.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/3/ahead_of_first_obama_romney_debate

Fantastic idea! Probably wouldn't be to expensive to set up.

We now live in a time when all of our voices can be heard. The serfs now have moveable print

I am fucking 100% for this.

Imagine what the debates that surround this would be like. We could actually have some substance.

10/10 post OP

Found this. Relevant. http://evm2003.sourceforge.net/index.html

What if an alternative election was held by the people for the people online even if it wasn't real. Would you support it, and shift your attention away from the illusion that we live in a country of freedom?

That statement makes no sense. There are already many polls that do just this. I really don't care about people voting in something that does not matter and care more about people actually voting.

Bit congress can do this. Corrupt Politicians and lobbyists should be quaking in their boots. Imagine such a system that did away with politicians and gave the vote on every issue to the people direct http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1tgauk/bitcongress_voting_protocol_cryptocurrency/

Absolutely. It would be very interesting.

The whole reason for having it is to de centralise it. As soon as you add any central repository then it's no longer in the hands of the people. Granted you can use the electoral register and a public address assigned to it to get the ball rolling. To remain anonymous you can employ dark wallet functionality so you can see your own vote and everyone can see all votes (but not who voted or they can see who voted but not which way) only of you have the private key can you get this.

No, you have it wrong.

We are electing leaders with power in this process.

Sadly...power corrupts, and that if you take a corrupt person in power & replace them with a fair & just person, sooner or later they also will become swallowed in corruption.

In the future voting system there are no candidates or leaders.

Voting will take place in real time on everything from taxation to going to war. There will be an app for this.

There will be civil servants who will then carry out this bidding of the people.

Yes, this is a fair distinction between leaders and rulers.

We need to give people a vision of what things could be like instead of telling them what's wrong the current system.

This is a great idea, make it happen.

I really like this idea. We should do it.

I have been wanting this for a long time.

What a neat idea. Way to think outside the box OP.

+1 on this idea.

I also want to revisit the idea someone from a post over the weekend said.

Stop supporting corporations by buying or supporting what they're selling us.

This is a big problem that gets perpetuated forward every time we support the machine.

Barter for services. If you're a gardener and you need some work done on your car, trade your services for his. That's how you stick it to the corporations.

Grow your own food. Learn new skills online. Learn to be self sufficient.

Participate in local politics. You can't change national politics the way the game is rigged, but you can influence local politics by being active in them.

I would love to do this, especially if it was legitimate (in that 1 american = 1 vote) and the results were completely opposite of the 'real' election.

Good idea. I would support something like this - anything would be better than the "system" we have in place now, and ideas like this are an awesome start.

This is a great idea.

This is a good idea. Id participate.

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Timestamp - 2014-05-08 11:50:57

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Why should American Idol be more of a democracy than our government? Of course this is a great idea...for the people; which is why it won't happen.

Netokratia?

you should look into this site.

I realize you're proposing something more structured to the popular vote, but there are huge synergies.

I think eventually there will come the need for strong P2P crypto and national-ID, which will need to be adopted to prevent the election fraud that has occurred in the past few runs.

Attention tech entrepreneurs :

There is an open lane ready for taking right now. Just waiting to happen is a universal poll voting website. The website would be similar to reddit but ONLY for voting and less easy to create new accounts. The website would be for creating official global polls. It would he the gold standard for democracy. Let's call it say "Consents-us".

"The US government still has drugs illegal but the official poll on consents-us only shows that 14% of people agree with that policy. "

Not saying I agree or disagree with democracy. I'm just saying there is a market open for the first tech dev that wants to take it.

excited for the documentary link thanks OP! You're idea is a good one but the problem is people are still to divided in their thinking due to belief structures and programming. I'm guilty of it too.

Elon Musk would have my vote.

I want to be a part of this project. I nominate myself to be a voting member of the political committee based on my account history. Vote for Ned :)

I am totally down I am not incredibly computer savvy but I'd love to help with anything. Let me now. Woo freedom!

"they" call an election, no one votes in the rigged official election/selection, everyone votes in the alternate election instead, which election has legitimacy?

it might have to grow over a few election cycles but its a great idea

Its my belief that small distributed groups of people can help our society prosper over any top down governing body simply because its closer directly to individuals.

This.

Central government is redundant. In the past, due to travel and communication problems and delays it was justified. In the internet age? It is not.

It's superfluous, it's wasteful, it's ripe for and rife with, greed and corruption.

Can you make it bot free?

If people vote for this election, then it IS REAL. Who runs this country anyway?

This will happen. We are more powerful than we think.

I would

Internet democracy would be an exciting undertaking for our society. It has potential to upset the current status quo though. There will be lots of money opposing anything of the sort.

Let's make this happen!

I would DEFINITELY support that!

Man what an original idea! I'm surprised people haven't thought of voting on some sort of polling system that would then count there choices. Especially close to the elections, you would think sites would just create someway of asking your opinions on the elections and would be open to whoever has a computer.

Reddit, in theory operates by this exact principle. In fact, barring the problems of throwaway accounts already mentioned elsewhere, a system like Reddit could even one day be used to create a near true democracy. (not that that is necessarily the best way to go about things)

Marble cake and also the game!

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Hillary 2016?

Obama mentioned it during his correspondent's dinner. "Its going to be harder to say Hillary was born in Kenya" or something like that.

Biden was in the room. Awkward.

Yes, Yes, and Yes again. If you need help organizing this, please PM me with details.

I like it. While we are at it, a similar movement could be used to start a grassroots push at a constitutional convention.

But I like the idea of a route around election even better. And why the hell not fund it on Kickstarter?

I had that thought just yesterday. Elections should be open source and run multiple times by various firms, organizations, parties and websites.

It's fool proof, because everyone will watch over the other.

Might get more response on r/FutureWhatIf

Didn't bother reading it, but an fake online election would get hacked anyways to make the 'special interests' candidate look like the people like this guy anyway.

4chan would just hijack it and elect Hitler as president and butt sex flavored doritos as vp. Sooo... no

I can see the headlines now... "Adolf Hitler gets 90% of the vote"

It's certainly an interesting experiment - the problem is A) Ron Paul isn't running anymore B) Let's be honest, all the viable candidates are compromised.

Gary Johnson will be. Also someone like Judge Napolitano would be good i.e. if we could convince him to run.

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Personal attacks aren't allowed here. You'll need to follow the rules if you want to participate.

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Is there a TL;DR? I'm sympathetic, but don't have time to read a wall of text.

Scan through and read a few sentences from each paragraph... you'll get the idea. Better yet, spend a few minutes(or less) and read the whole thing. Not everything in this world can be explained in 3 sentences or less.

Not asking for an explanation, just a summary. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Very related

I think you're probably right in a lot of ways. The problem is actually getting people out of their house to do something. I think you'd have much less difficulty actually getting participation with something digital in this day and age, and while I long for a good old fashioned protest, I think some action is better than none.