I'm just wondering, if eg. Catalonia could have its referendum done on blockchain.
It would be super-cool to use existing citizen IDs to distrubute the ballots permisionlessly
But there may be problems with anonymity.
Another thing we should reconsider if anonymity is actually a required/desired thing in a direct democracy. Athenians voted by raising their hands, after all.
I'm afraid it wouldn't work. The social pressure is very strong. Many people would be afraid.
Yes, such technology would be easier to sell with at least pseudonymity working.
Pseudonimity is feasible with blockchain, but is that enough?
Well, as long as it only goes gives the voter ability to sign a message to prove that a particular ballot has been cast by them it seems okay.
With the reissue of SS#s as Pub/Private keys, the tech for this is mostly done.
You are right, it needs to be figured out. You could still maintain pseudonymity with the right process of generating addresses/distributing the ballots, which would be good enough.
I am not going to pretend I have a good-enough grasp of cryptography and bitcoin to design such process :p
