BitCongress - BLOCKCHAIN BASED VOTING SYSTEM

BitCongress · January 2014

BLOCKCHAIN BASED VOTING SYSTEM

Decentralized Peer-2-Peer System
Open Source & Crowd funded
Votes Verified By Miners Like Bitcoins
Public Ledger Of Votes, Secured Voting
Anonymous, Pseudonymous & Full Identity
?Legislation & Ranking System Integration?
Transferable Cryptocoin Vote Token
Built Integrated Using Bitcoin & Ethereum

BitCongress is a decentralized, peer to peer, open source voting system protocol. Working as a open source voting protocol that anyone can plug into & use for their own specific need or use.
BitCongress is somewhat of a mixture of cryptographic technologies including:

?Bitcoin, BitMessage, BitTorrent, Proof Of Existence & Reddit.

The Mission is a cryptography created legislation toolbox that anyone can use.

Within the Ethereum network that tallies & verifies smart contracts is the BitCongress system that labels a Ethereum Smart Contract a newly formed token, called a VoteCoin, being used as votes, such as YES, NO & NEUTRAL, in a Blockchain register of votes, keeping tally of everything voted on in the public eye.

The next step would be creating Axiomity & VoteCoins onto The Ethereum Network to give the system a functioning, hashing, mined crypto currency with smart contract features.

This system helps put in place a validated voting system that anyone can become the vote counter or auditor, in this creating a VoteCoin, a fully transferable cryptocurrency, giving the system a monetary value that will give incentive to miners to verify not only transactions but votes as well.

I would like to get the community involved in this Voting Idea to make this project as soon as possible. I can only do so much myself as I am running Bitcoin Kinetics almost night and day full time. I see this voting system as completely vital to the future of humanity. Just as I see the work I do for Bitcoin Kinetics. So if you would like to help make a safe & efficient Blockchain based Voting system please contact me.

Morgan Rockwell
http://bitcongress.org/

StephanTual · January 2014

Very cool! Looking forward to learn more. PS: bitcoin kinetics also has potential for Eth in the context of smart property/internet of things.

Ryan · January 2014

Like the potential very much. Open democracy

Hammer · February 2014

Interesting! Glad to know someone already has plans to build on top of ethereum

shawnleary · February 2014

This could be huge, we do not need 500 congressman and senators that hire 150 aides that actually read and write the laws in order to run the government, we need to move back to how the founders intended it, everyone should be able to have a candid personal conversation with their local congressional figure. A system like this could literally transfer the power back to the people. Let me know how I can help.

mjdecour · February 2014

Are you looking for any design help?

ctindall · February 2014

How do we preserve the secrecy of our votes? Or is it your contention that a system in which everybody can see who/what everyone votes for would be preferable to the traditional system?

Also, letting people transfer their votes to others presumably even allowing the outright selling of votes seems like a perfect way to disenfranchise the poor, who will likely gladly sell their vote for enough money to eat or pay rent for the next year.

shawnleary · February 2014

Ctindall, I think the ultimate goal would be to increase the number of representatives. Even in Ancient Greece often a quorum of 6000 was needed in order to vote. With the technology and communication of today, why don't we have 10,000 congress men and women? I would trust 50,000 strangers to decide on a decision rather than 535 "directly" elected officials, or even one electorally elected person. If we think about it, how many in our federal government are directly elected? Supreme Court, nope, President, nope (electoral college), Senators, yes but not equally amongst the populace (Rhode Islander has more influence with their vote than a Texan or Californian), house of reps, yes but every state gets at least one regardless of population so even there is some inequality in voting and is often skewed even more between censuses. Give the educated masses the right to vote on critical issues and Change will happen.

ctindall · February 2014

How will you change the constitution to allow this? Or simply sidestep it and run candidates that pledge to vote exactly the way the blockchain tells them to? How do we deal with monstrous things like the intelligence committees, where even most of the duly-elected members aren't allowed to know the full truth about the things they are supposed to be regulating and overseeing? Just bake it into the blockchain and hope our guy isn't killed or imprisoned? How do we know that they are telling us everything we need to know to make our decisions?

On a technical side, how do you distribute private keys in such a way that no one can just create an arbitrary number of them, or in a way which disenfranchises people without a huge hashrate or huge reserves of ETH?

I think this is a great initiative and may lead to real change in the future, but these are the kind of tough questions that at least need to be asked.

ethertechture · February 2014

Have you considered implementing Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)?

BitCongress · February 2014

I want you all to know that your input is vital to me & this project. If you have any ideas, code, plans, designs or anything you would like to contribute please send to [email protected]

Jakzilla · February 2014

I think that if I understand correctly, IRV can theoretically result in Condorcet cycles. Perhaps range voting might be helpful?

VitalikButerin · February 2014

Range voting is problematic because there's no incentive to vote anything other than 0 or 100 - you're just voluntarily reducing your impact that way. The fix is to just make 0 and 100 the only options, ie. approval voting. But ultimately, I would say we should try all the different voting systems out and use the project as an experiment to see which ones work best.

mlacorte · February 2014

I think there may be a problem in this type of system. In order for votes to remain confidential, a third party would have to hold onto a password/key/secret until it's time for votes to be revealed. The problem is that with their secret, they could look at the results as votes are coming in to determine who's voting for who. Would your votes be public, and would you be able to see the results in real time?

Babo · February 2014

It is perfectly legal and valid, although certainly not easy, to change the constitution without the consent/help of Congress through a National Constitutional Convention. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Lawrence Lessig has been pushing for exactly this the past few years.

Karmicads · February 2014

This is an idea I have been musing over since I first experinced many to many disscusion on usenet before WWW. The important point is to be voting directly for ideas and objectives or legislation, rather than for who you want to make your decisions for you. For this we need discussion fora and a system to foster inteligent consensus. The voting needs to be an extention of the forum and cater to all manner of decicions (i.e

Multiple choce, rateing, proportional or conditional. The ballat accounting likewise, needs to remain as flexible as possible and pollymorphic pending specific requirement.

Karl_Schroeder · February 2014

I really do like this idea; however, I have questions. They mostly concern the issues that surround voting systems, not the voting system itself. Who gets to vote? is the most important. Currently, there are any number of ways in which people become un-people at voting time. Here in Canada, the current Conservative government is right now "reforming" the electoral process so that people can no longer vouch for another person at the poll. People often leave their ID at home, or don't have any or don't have the right kind, so, having someone else vouch for them is necessary for them to be able to vote. The government wants to eliminate this in the name of reducing voter fraud, even though there really isn't any significant amount via this mechanism. What I'm saying is that implementing a vote-counting system is not the hard problem. It's dealing with the ambiguities of identity around the edges of citizenship that is hard. Yet that problem HAS to be solved for a system like this to be considered truly democratic.

CubeSpawn · March 2014

I think that timers and buffering would be necessary in any voting system to dampen reactionary decisions - democracy can be mobocracy if the voice of reason is drowned by "gut reaction"

In an instant feedback system, a provocative video could lead to war, which is clearly not desirable for social longevity.

Also, the larger issue of Identity becomes important since pseudonymous actors without proven identities could be created purely for agitation and issue warping... perhaps a tier scheme would be necessary in which you could have greater anonymity, but at the cost of "weighting" your votes influence... perhaps in direct proportional to your anonymity. (probably have to vote on it :-)

Additionally, as is evident in the current schemes, vociferous minorities tend to have disproportionate influence over issues they are passionate about (or obsessive over) many people are generally indifferent to a vast range of governmental issues, so what would prevent 200 people "steering" a series of issue votes that 100,000 others were indifferent to? if you let active participant decide issues, you put zealots in the drivers seat... All interesting issues that would merit resolution before such a system went live for a society...

Fascinating step forward, regardless ;-)

SatCa · March 2014

You're taking about running an organisation.
That requires management.

There needs to be a primary motive for creation of a government.
What is it's purpose.

It would work, but deciding a culture for this government is of paramount importance.

Do you have a forum?

dyamanaka · March 2014

Sounds like a way to implement "Direct Democracy" mentioned by Gerald Celente.

I should note, Enforcement has always been the real power of any government or institution. Just something to think about

SatCa · March 2014

Enforcement, hmmm I thought that's what everyone was running away from.

I have a forum, http://honestcoin.createaforum.com/general-discussion/

I'm trying to collect support for a model for Open governance. It's an Open arena, no moderation

Why don't we collaborate there.

dyamanaka · March 2014

My statement was meant as a caution, not endorsement. Kinda like beware of Thugs cause they don't care about your laws.

dimitris · March 2014

This is a brilliant idea. I don't think that the political technicalities (i.e. will the congress approve such a tool, will government A or B use it) are relevant. The goal should be to produce a tool / standard and then if it is useful it will be adopted. My main question is how do you associate a vote to a person? What is the mechanism for determining the 'unique id' of that person? In any case, this may be an issue which is outside the scope of this project.

How can we help?

dimebucker · March 2014

Brilliant!, Direct Democracy through Ethereum is the way forward!

We just set up this system within the current one and slowly but surely as everyone realises its power and potential they start supporting and using it. We make the current system irrelevant.

No more insane murderous foreign policy, no more corrupt controlled media, no more debt slavery!!

Regarding the 'unique id' of each person problem: surely you could issue something similar to a social security number to each newcomer. It might be an expensive to verify identity and issue special cards... but i'm sure crowdfunding could help!

Paseis · April 2014

May I suggest contacting the likes of Dean Clifford of the Freeman movement http://deanclifford.info/ . Dean is somewhat of a whiz when it comes to Law and freedom rights, and I think that he and others could bring a an interesting take on how this type of democracy could be approached holistically.

khalidibrahim · April 2014

I'm interested in this idea.

Yaalt · April 2014

Very nice ideas. Most importantly guys, hold on before you try to apply this to government and geopolitics, were not there yet. The other user has asked, who can vote? Is this based on IP address ,availability of coins, voluntary, are there restrictions? This is very important.
Today it was announced that MaidSafe is launching with there own safecoin. I'm looking for developers that would like to work on a decentralized search engine but using the old social media model.

mykljonzun · April 2014

In case you haven't read it, take a look at _Gaming the Vote_, by William Poundstone. I would highly recommend this book as an ideal source for validating whatever voting methodology you choose.

http://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Vote-Elections-Arent-About/dp/B002SB8OMA/

BitcoinKinetics · May 2014

Here is Morgan Rockwell's interview with Adam Kokesh on AdamVsTheMan talking about Bitcoin Kinetics, BitCongress, Ethereum, #Bitcoin, Blockchain.info and so much more. Enjoy Humanity!

Jack · May 2014

Cryptographic voting has a lot of potential, but not without some technical problems. An individual with malicious intent could rig an election with the ability to abuse the protocol used. How do we verify that each every person only has ONE vote?

Another problem with cryptographic voting in general is hiding the identity of the voter. Perhaps Blind Signatures ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_signature ) could be used?

mykljonzun · May 2014

Here's an implementation of a blind signature system called Proof of Existence (www.proofofexistence.com). It's up and running on the Bitcoin blockchain.

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BitCongress - BLOCKCHAIN BASED VOTING SYSTEM

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