Distributed Ledgers, which are permissioned (ID ratified) and public hold great promise for evoting. A properly designed, "by State" sharded, vote summary 'roll-up' into such a distributed ledger of this type, would have the "TPS" Transactions per Second @scale AND, would have given US electorate in 2020 a clear decision, in about 5 minutes, after the national polls closed on the West coast, with transparency and honesty included.
Instead, we witness the citizens of the US having to endure the current Schmozzle a.ka. the US 2020 Election, probably into Mid December, before the US Presidency is decided.
The US DoJ and the Judicial System might be slow, not perfect, however the the SCOTUS accurate interpretation and application of US Federal Law eventually gets to the correct decision, provided the sitting SCOTUS judges do their job (and are not influenced by previous party affiliations which got them elected in the first place. Wishful thinking I know. ;) )
Crypto DLT to US Mid Term Vote Rescue in 2022?
Such a DLT concept as proposed above for securing the US 2022 Mid Term evoting does not require or need mail in, absentee ballots. Even a polling station opening early in state, at embassies, consulates or military sites around the world could easily deploy securely connected access voting stations, where ID is physically checked by those which have swore an oath to uphold Federal law and the Constitution, before the voter places their immutable vote on such a distributed sharded permissioned public ledger, via such stations.
Will DLT evoting @ scale happen in time for US 2022 Mid terms? Maybe.
It's technically possible to implement DLT evoting @ scale on a number of existing public permissioned DLTs which use either energy efficient, fast PoW consensus schemes or , such a design could also be employed as dPoS, where the delegates running the DL nodes are c0-located securely in each state.
Personally I am working on such a design for eVoting at the Municipal level which could be linked up into either a State or Federal posting to the main branch of a permissioned public DL , operating as a DL sharded immutable record of the evote at the county/precinct or district voting level. Checkout early work on SOVRINTown for more information on how that works at a "bird's eye" level, inter-operating with ongoing evoter approved, Smart Contract controlled eGovernance of Budget Spend control and Reporting. (A 'dry' read I know, so bring a glass of water with you.)
Public Permissioned DL Candidates for America with TPS Scale and Sharding: Top 6 and their 'Leaders'
#Cardano- Charles Hoskinson Age 33 USA recently tweeted he might just do that, we will see. TPS is emerging as is Sharding with dPoS as Consensus. "Hoskinson joined the Ethereum founding team (one of eight original founders) with Vitalik Buterin in late 2013 and left in June 2014.[5] He devoted significant time to the Ethereum project because he realized it was "going to be big”.[11] Hoskinson left Ethereum after a dispute about accepting venture capital and need for a more formal governing structure" (Wikipedia Post Excerpt)
A Gen I type, "betweenie" who has the Gen Y and Z ears and likely Gen X interest , Hoskinson certainly would be a leading candidate to lead a evoting purpose built version of CARDANO
#EOS- Daniel Larimer USA Age 39 who also prolifically led development of early blockchain "BitShares where left in 2016 to co-found the blockchain Steem and the application Steemit, a social network which uses blockchain technology to reward users for their content, on top of it.[3] After co-founding Steemit together with Ned Scott, Larimer was CTO of the platform until March 14, 2017 where he left to go on to build up EOS. " (Wikipedia Post Excerpt paraphrased by TK)
A Very early Gen I, Late Gen Xer depending how you stratify the voter generations , Larimer is the most technically prolific DLT Architect on this short list. His CV screams mercenary, so may be he is ready for this challenge.
#Stellar- Jed McCaleb " USA Age 45 is a co-founder and the CTO of Stellar.[1] Prior to co-founding Stellar, McCaleb founded and served as the CTO of the company Ripple until 2013.[2] McCaleb is also known for creating the Mt. Gox, and the peer-to-peer eDonkey and Overnet networks as well as the eDonkey2000 application." (Wikipedia Post Excerpt)
Squarely a Mid to late Gen Xer, McCaleb might be the best candidate on this list to lead a US evote build. He still likely gets what most honest Boomers want, transparency and honesty in voting and, can most likely communicate and connect to Gens I,X,Y,Z within the political and general voting worlds
#Ethereum 2.0 - Vitalik Buterin RU/CDN is and early technical contributor and Leading spokesperson of Ethereum
The only reason Ethereum made my shortlist is the huge communities of developers in the US and Canada. Buterin himself at only 26, is publicly known to be too socially awkward to even think about engaging w/ politics and government to get anything done. That said, some group or ERC20 derivatives could spring forward to change that and challenge using ETH 2.0 PoS to win a US Govt RFP for such a US evoting DLT project.
IOTA - A Hybrid low energy PoW DL with the best TPS in this category ready to scale for the voting app , #IOTA having a Norwegian, Austrian, Russian and Belorussian as co founders , IOTA foundation registered in Germany, on the surface seems a less likely choice as a bidder to a US Govt RFP for evoting. That said, IOTA is rapidly rolling out its US presence, with BD leader Mathew Yarger and today has key US and Canadian developers leading key parts of the IOTA open source project located on github. Recently US led Society2 led by Ben Royce (US Age 50) a mid Gen Xer, is leading his newly minted distributed Team (NL, D, Africa, US), who are busy adding a social network software developer kit and useful apps to ride on top of IOTA's TANGLE and STREAMS, which we believe, when combined with IOTA Access Secure ID ( for polling station running FPGA IOTA #Hornet Node on Raspberry Pi) and IOTA Smart Contract Colored Coin support, could easily support Bingo coin style voting at the voting station which is feeless, exactly what we are looking to do at SOVRINtown for evoting.
#ERC20 Challenger on ETH 2.0 - This is a placeholder, lots to pick from I am told, however I'm personally not sure, not well researched enough, as to which one which one(s) has eVoting "Big Boy Pants" capabilities in the ERC20 camp so, your suggestions in the comments below always welcome!
TK's US 2022 Mid Terms eVoting Adoption Prognosis?- Maybe it's a Political Opportunity?
The current schmozzle is really stinky, dirty and complicated with many moving parts. What the Federal US govt needs to do imo, is operate in parallel to this "noise" and quickly prepare first an RFI and then RFP to acquire permissioned public distributed ledger tech with @ scale proven TPS an, sharding and Fast Consensus which includes existing public nodes.
The above technology and contacts list is a place to start.
the US Govt gaining the political will to actually head in this direction to fix the schmozzle is really the big unknown.
Who will step forward? It's anyone's guess at this point.
What I do know is, if the US govt take this step the crypto community at large, will gladly jump forward to solve the US schmozzle voting problem quickly to, finally, bring honesty and transparency in a permissionless way, which protects voter privacy, a voting result which is both trusted and verified.
A huge step I know, however it's one step which is long over due. (Now try to find a politician with the 'nads to do it, much harder!)
That's all for now, be safe..,
TK over and out.
