In the United States elections are based on the concept of secret ballot. This is a good thing becuase it helps protect voters from fear of coercion and intimidation.
As much as I like blockchain technology I believe it simply wouldn't work in state and federal elections. Some may believe that something like bitcoin is completely anonymous but cryptocurrency's complete anonymity is largely a myth.
Using bitcoin as an example: If I have 0.0 bitcoin and no means to mine bitcoin I would need to purchase some from an exchange. Most exchanges have KYC and other legal regulations now. My name and personal information would be associated with the exchange account's bitcoin address. If I buy 1.0 BTC and transfer that 1.0 BTC to a private wallet and start using bitcoin addresses only once there are different software programs that can look at the publicly available ledger and make inferences that can sooner or later be traced back.
The thought of having my entire voting history in a publicly available ledger that can be traceable and permanently exist frankly scares me. The current secret ballot system can be audited to an extent for the purposes of fraud detection but safeguards exist by law. Even if those safeguards somehow don't kick in gettting access to the way I voted in the last three or four other past elections would be nearly impossible.
I was registered to a different political party ten years ago. Some of my opinions have changed since I reached the age of majority and started voting. I don't know with absolute certainty what kind of government I'll be living under ten or twenty years from today or who will be in charge.
One of the state propositions in this current election concerned an issue I support but I voted no because of the way the proposition was written. That would shock a few of my close friends if they knew that. I won't tell them because I know at least one of those friends supports the same issue but doesn't feel the same way. I probably won't be asked how I voted for that proposition because people who know me assume I vote certain ways. If they ask I have the freedom to lie or try to change the subject because I would rather not debate the spirit versus letter of the law.
Or maybe my friend also thought the proposition was worded badly. I don't know. I have no right to know for certain how others vote just like they don't have that right over me if that's my choice.
Even if an election voting ledger was private and encoded there's always the risk that one day that private ledger could be leaked and made public. There would always be the chance someone could figure out or reverse engineer the decryption.
The power of the U.S. Department of Defense couldn't keep the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers. Virtually every DRM encryption Hollywood tries to use to protect their intellectual property gets hacked sooner or later. What chance would I have keeping my votes private if the government started using blockchain technology during election time?
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STOPDo not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:
Agreed. Having political donations public is enough (and even then, I think small total amounts from a single individual should be private) and I'm personally also not interested in having a vote public on a blockchain.
Stop downvoting me or get downvoted forever
I think we're both reasonable people. I think we both want peace. I would like to propose a deal.
You are asking me to surrender my right to freedom of association. I am afraid if I agree to this you will then believe you have the power to use your Hive Power to demand other things like dictating the opinions I express on my blog (a.k.a. Freedom of Speech).
I will surrender my right to freedom of association and remove myself from the downvote trails if both you and @gardenofeden agree to the following:
-Both you and @gardenofeden remove all your downvotes from my content during the last week. -Both you and @gardenofeden promise to never demand I surrender any other rights I have such as the freedom to decide what I can and can't post. -Both you and @gardenofeden will never downvote any of my posts ever again. -Both you and @gardenofeden will reblog and upvote a minimum of 1% a post I will make about our agreement and both you and @gardenofeden reply to the post that you promise to not violate any of the above stipulations.
If you both agree to this I will agree to the following:
-I will remove myself from all downvote trails on hive.vote and never join a downvote trail again.
-I will make a post about our agreement and reply that I promise to not violate any of the stipulations.
-I will remove all of my downvotes from @gardenofeden and your content during the last week. -I will never downvote @gardenofeden or your content again but I can upvote @gardenofeden's content and/or your content if I chose to of my own free will. I will delete the content on the posts https://peakd.com/hive-193084/@holovision/xfa3l4rppvhu2u6wqj0il7 and https://peakd.com/hive-193084/@holovision/bacjtd2ks9cbnahtqixrwo I will never specifically mention you abd/or @gardenofeden in any other blog post again or specifically refer to the disagreement we've had over the last few days.
If both you and @gardenofeden are willing to make a deal I think we can all walk away satisfied. I am hopefully we can resolve this issue peacefully and have a blog post that will act as our treaty.
It's comical the bully is asking you, a small user, to surrender but too afraid to deal with the bigger guys.
Listen we didn't start downvoting people. We have been creating original content on the blockchain for a very long time. We have promoted blockchain and educated thousands.
We were the ones who not only got bullied and downvoted for weeks, but also by a freaking bot with a downvote trail.
Then we simply ask to not be downvoted without any reason whatsoever and we are called the bully?
Please this is beyond ridiculous.
We didn’t start the downvoting nor have we ever even downvoted until just this last week.
On top of that we didn’t even downvote for the first week of being downvoted.
We feed tens of thousands of free meals a year off the chain. All we do is help people. But when a bot downvoted us without any conversation we have to retaliate.
If you want to take the side of a hypocrite bot who attacks people who live in sustainable community growing food and feeding people then it’s just like the police state.
You bullied a small user. You recycle content. You upvote your own shitty comments.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out how false that statement is.
Ya we downvoted a smaller account like your hypocrite posse does all day.
How ridiculous indeed.
You have a whole group of people who don't even know what they are downvoting. Even worse.
Plus you generate zero content......
🤯
Normally I'd also be curious about that but I would be happy having that as an unsolved mystery and getting assurance that this can all be peacefully ended.
If not all they can do effectively is vote me down and since I am a small user as you pointed out and don't make much I can just get around 3,000 Hive that I can convert to Hive Power to delegate on dlease.io for a daily payout to make up for what I would lose each day. I may not have massive Hive Power but I believe I have good discernment and creativity and maybe that's just as good in a fight if I am pushed into action.
Listen we didn't start downvoting people. We have been creating original content on the blockchain for a very long time. We have promoted blockchain and educated thousands.
We were the ones who not only got bullied and downvoted for weeks, but also by a freaking bot with a downvote trail.
Then we simply ask to not be downvoted without any reason whatsoever and we are called the bully?
Please this is beyond ridiculous.
We didn’t start the downvoting nor have we ever even downvoted until just this last week.
On top of that we didn’t even downvote for the first week of being downvoted.
We feed tens of thousands of free meals a year off the chain. All we do is help people. But when a bot downvoted us without any conversation we have to retaliate.
If you want to take the side of a hypocrite bot who attacks people who live in sustainable community growing food and feeding people then it’s just like the police state.
Don't down vote us and stop supporting hivewatchers and spaminators or get down voted forever
So you have declared war.
Expect to earn nothing on this chain from now on.
No downvotes of theirs that cannot easily be healed, no earnings of theirs that cannot easily be erased, and all the justification needed for it is on chain. Welcome to community governance.
@azircon
We are far more powerful than you
You don’t make demands
You have to do what we say
You or you ilk continue to threaten people on here, I can promise that neither of you will ever make a dime on HIVE ever again @quinneaker, @gardenofeden.
Listen we didn't start downvoting people. We have been creating original content on the blockchain for a very long time. We have promoted blockchain and educated thousands.
We were the ones who not only got bullied and downvoted for weeks, but also by a freaking bot with a downvote trail.
Then we simply ask to not be downvoted without any reason whatsoever and we are called the bully?
Please this is beyond ridiculous.
We didn’t start the downvoting nor have we ever even downvoted until just this last week.
On top of that we didn’t even downvote for the first week of being downvoted.
We feed tens of thousands of free meals a year off the chain. All we do is help people. But when a bot downvoted us without any conversation we have to retaliate.
If you want to take the side of a hypocrite bot who attacks people who live in sustainable community growing food and feeding people then it’s just like the police state.
Lol I ain’t the hypocrite 😂
Lol ya right
@quinneaker and @gardenofeden Well, on one hand whichever downvoting trail I am a member of that flagged a harrasssing account like yours gives me confidence they know what they were doing. On the other hand your attitudes make me confident neither of you would honor any agreements you make.
Since it is Halloween and it turns out monsters do in fact exist I will just have to trust you for absolutely no reason. I will go to hive.vote right now and unfollow all of my downvoting trails.
Tonight you both win.
@holovision their vote power is substantial compared to most of us 1 on 1, but there are a lot of us and you have help. Don't worry.
@quinneaker this comment vote history is proof enough that you are finished here. We don’t tolerate bullying from ethugs like you.
Thanks. Right now I am just going to proceed with business as usual. I've done exactly what they demanded and I am no longer following any downvoting trails so my @holovision account won't be downvoting them. If that's truly what was bothering them there's no reason they should come back and harass me again or downvote me forever like they threatened they would.
No need to succumb to bullies. Like I said above, now they have the visibility, there's no damage they can do that won't get healed.
It's a strategic withdraw. It's my INTJ personality. For right now if unfollowing all of the downvoting trails I was on at hive.vote makes them happy then I can deal with that. As long as I ignore them I won't be downvoting them by accident.
It's more worth it to me right now to try not to escalate. In order to begin to fight back right now I would have to sell all 2000 ENG tokens I have on my @memehive account along with some ethereum assets to get the Hive to lease on dlease.io to make up for what I would lose each day of them downvoting me. I plan to start the MemeHive community after the current pandemic ends so I would rather just appease the bullies for now so I can keep to my plans.
If they come back again later for no apparent reason then I'll reevaluate my position. Right now I would rather have the permanent record of the blockchain show I made every reasonable effort to deescalate the situation.
Lol you will loose