[SJk7TAy]

I have a very practical question with big political implications: Can electronic passports be used to make large-scale elections without government involvement?

I am thinking of authoritarian countries that issue modern e-passports but do not allow free elections. Can activists organize an election for all citizens of that country in some online form, asking the voters to scan their passports using their phones, so that

- only legitimate citizens (who have passports) can vote - votes remain anonymous - everybody can vote only once - the whole election can be audited

[iso1631]

> authoritarian countries that issue modern e-passports but do not allow free elections

Those tend to not issue passports (of any kind) to many citizens.

Then there's access. In America for example only half the adults in the country even have a passport, and I suspect that skews quite heavily towards one demographic. Do you think that India, Nigeria, or Russia have more equitable access?

And even if they did, what stops the state issuing extra fake passports to citizens they want to vote.

of course then there's key elements of a free election, freedom of access to the ballot paper, freedom to campaign the same as others, freedom from imprisonment because you are running against the incumbent leader, having each vote being worth the same. Many countries prevent people in jail from voting, or even people who used to be in jail. Many countries give more power to one constituency than another, almost all have some level of unequal access to campaigning.

It's not a "Free election" or "no election".

The actual casting of the vote is only part of the story.

[j16sdiz]

> authoritarian countries that issue modern e-passports but do not allow free elections

You are trying to solve a political problem with a technological solution.

1. Many authoritarian countries don't allow freedom of travel (i.e. it is not easy to get a passport)

2. If they don't care free election, what's stopping them issuing more passport just for voting?

3. What's stopping them confiscating or revoking your passport?

[alphazard]

Yes, as long as the passports implement a signing scheme, and the set of valid public keys (the electorate) can be agreed upon. If you can sign arbitrary data, then you can sign other public keys, including whatever the voting system requires.

Vitalik has a great blog post about blockchain voting.

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html

You probably wouldn't want to use the cryptography on the passports themselves to implement the voting system. You probably want to use one of the general purpose zkSTARKs or multi-party-computation systems.

[morshu9001]

Can it be anonymous though? Ie you as a citizen can check that the outcome didn't count illegitimate votes, and that it included your vote, but can't tell who voted each way or at all.

[stuffn]

This seems like navel gazing. Under OP's constraints it wouldn't matter what the tally is. The authoritarian won't cede power because they lost by a cryptographically secure election. They'll either

A. Force the cryptography to be weak to provide plausible deniability

B. Issue more passports for "citizens" that "voted" for them

C. Refuse the count and just keep power

Leaders don't cede power because their citizens are angry. Especially not in authoritarian countries.

[Muromec]

>Can activists organize an election for all citizens of that country in some online form, asking the voters to scan their passports using their phones, so that

By the point said activists reach organizational capacity to do so, they have already won and can hold the vote basically with scanning a qr code with a simple app.

>only legitimate citizens (who have passports) can vote

this makes no sense as a requirement in a situation you described.

[morshu9001]

The authoritarian govt controls who gets passports and can create fake people if it wants.

[embedding-shape]

I think once an authoritarian government is holding elections, regardless digital, analog or anything else, they can manipulate the results, there is no 100% foolproof way of holding honest elections when the top authority might not be honest.