It is imperative you can vote without others knowing how you voted (at least here in the UK…). Electronic voting is inferrior to paper when it comes to trustworthness of recording an anonymous vote, counting the result and preventing mass vote fraud.
We already have a hardcopy ID to travel internationally or ID to drive vehicles. The risks of an electronic ID being easily copied would have to get me visiting other solar systems or driving a time machine before I considered it. Something tells me the paper options would continue working at first but eventually this idea will be forced on people.
I was expecting skepticism about that in my comment and choose purposefully the word “referendum” for that reason.
I dont think electronic voting is ready for important electoral votes but it may be sufficiently secure for referendums that are fully digital. In France, you can sign petition to force certain questions to be asked to the government. A cryptographic mean to sign that petition would be very useful and in this case prevent people from attempting to sign multiple times.
We already have a hardcopy ID to travel internationally or ID to drive vehicles. The risks of an electronic ID being easily copied would have to get me visiting other solar systems or driving a time machine before I considered it.
I think the opposite. Standard papers are and always have been fraudulently copied by criminals. Cryptography can make it impossible to copy an ID card the same way it makes it impossible to clone your credit card.
The main risk is for governments to try to emit fake ID cards for imaginary citizens, but they were already doing it mostly for their “spies”.
I honestly think it will completely stop criminals from copying papers or creating fake ones. At least as long as the government takes security of the ID card emitting body is taken seriously and audited transparently.
Really a lot of your criticism of digital means applies very much to older paper based systems. I personally participated in counting votes in my local elections and despite many counts by multiple people, we didn’t get the same count everytime. So while mass fraud is very unlikely, the count of all elections is not really accurate.
But again my original point was for this digital ID card to be used only for referendums and not electoral voting. Anonymity is not necessary when citizens petition for a cause to be heard.
It is imperative you can vote without others knowing how you voted (at least here in the UK…). Electronic voting is inferrior to paper when it comes to trustworthness of recording an anonymous vote, counting the result and preventing mass vote fraud.
We already have a hardcopy ID to travel internationally or ID to drive vehicles. The risks of an electronic ID being easily copied would have to get me visiting other solar systems or driving a time machine before I considered it. Something tells me the paper options would continue working at first but eventually this idea will be forced on people.
I was expecting skepticism about that in my comment and choose purposefully the word “referendum” for that reason.
I dont think electronic voting is ready for important electoral votes but it may be sufficiently secure for referendums that are fully digital. In France, you can sign petition to force certain questions to be asked to the government. A cryptographic mean to sign that petition would be very useful and in this case prevent people from attempting to sign multiple times.
I think the opposite. Standard papers are and always have been fraudulently copied by criminals. Cryptography can make it impossible to copy an ID card the same way it makes it impossible to clone your credit card.
The main risk is for governments to try to emit fake ID cards for imaginary citizens, but they were already doing it mostly for their “spies”.
I honestly think it will completely stop criminals from copying papers or creating fake ones. At least as long as the government takes security of the ID card emitting body is taken seriously and audited transparently.
Really a lot of your criticism of digital means applies very much to older paper based systems. I personally participated in counting votes in my local elections and despite many counts by multiple people, we didn’t get the same count everytime. So while mass fraud is very unlikely, the count of all elections is not really accurate.
But again my original point was for this digital ID card to be used only for referendums and not electoral voting. Anonymity is not necessary when citizens petition for a cause to be heard.