Technology can realize greatly intensified forms of continuous democratic participation, but such applications must be openly developed and publicly owned.
OK, cool now teach your family that calls their web browser “The internet” enough computer science to adequately understand and audit this proposed open system and convince themselves that their votes are counted in a fair, verifiable and secret manner.
Also that the implementation does not have obvious side channels and what is actually running is built from the published source code.
Like, If I was part of some shady powerful elite I’d love a fully automated setup. Most people will not be able to check the system deeper than “phone displays green check mark” without an unreasonable time investment.
On the other hand, “room full of people opens box full of papers and counts them while verifying each other” is intuitive enough for almost anyone to grasp and gain confidence in.
OK, cool now teach your family that calls their web browser “The internet” enough computer science to adequately understand and audit this proposed open system and convince themselves that their votes are counted in a fair, verifiable and secret manner. Also that the implementation does not have obvious side channels and what is actually running is built from the published source code.
Like, If I was part of some shady powerful elite I’d love a fully automated setup. Most people will not be able to check the system deeper than “phone displays green check mark” without an unreasonable time investment.
On the other hand, “room full of people opens box full of papers and counts them while verifying each other” is intuitive enough for almost anyone to grasp and gain confidence in.