Bitcoin has only existed for three US elections. I don’t care about earlier or non decentralized ways. 2024 will be the first ever where it’s mainstream enough and possible to be used anywhere.
#Bitcoin will make elections extinct within ten years.
nostr:npub16edn737n8u3xz2sjywwz9xks2xgguvhg86fwuacv2ns92y7ln8csqk9xwc >We now have a verifiable and decentralized way to secure our elections
This has existed in Taiwan for years, and has been implemented in their elections for years. The vote counting is a very slow and very open process, but it is extremely verifiable and verification is open to "everyone who wants to do it." (Taiwan is one of the two functioning democracies in the world, so it is natural that they solved this problem by other means.)
The situation isn't changed at all by blockchain technology - again, the things you want were things that could be done before. They were, in fact, sometimes done before. The reason these things are not done isn't that the technology doesn't exist, the reason these things are not done is that the technology does not get adopted.
Discussion
nostr:npub16edn737n8u3xz2sjywwz9xks2xgguvhg86fwuacv2ns92y7ln8csqk9xwc >Bitcoin has only existed for three US elections.
It's a nitpick, but I think you're off by either one or two, depending on when you clock it (if you're counting only presidential elections, which I think you are).
>I don’t care about earlier or non decentralized ways.
You should care about ways of solving these problems that existed before - the ways in which they either did/didn't get adopted give us an idea of how likely it is that blockchain technology *will* get used to verify elections.
I think it is poor practice to hold out hope when similar things have failed in the past for reasons not involving technology. Adoption of technology in politics is often glacial, and is usually hindered by parties who benefit from poor solutions.
I don't think this conversation will yield much more fruit at this time, regardless - I think that when the next set of elections is shown to be fraudulent, that you might remember this conversation and think back on it. This type of optimism only really gets hammered out by observation and experience - and that's OK, because it looks to me like there is at least some time before things get so bad that people absolutely must separate into whichever side they end up on.
Take it easy bro. Maybe we'll run across each other on TWKN again some day, IDK.
Bitcoin. Not blockchain, not crypto.