Quote from: bffranca on June 07, 2015, 05:35:47 PM

Now that I saw what the Nxt's voting system is, I am disappointed. It appears that all votes are recorded in the blockchain in plaintext so that anyone can see who voted on what. https://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Voting_System "On the bottom of the pane, the votes cast in the poll are displayed while they are still available. For each voting account the account ID is shown along with the integer range value associated with each option voted for."

Most (if not all) cryptographic voting schemes are private (no one can see my vote) and receipt-free (I can't prove that I voted on a given option), this is done to avoid coercion and vote buying. Nxt's voting system is neither so it can't be used for any serious election. Despite that, there are articles saying it could be used in shareholder's elections, corporate governance (http://cointelegraph.com/news/113414/nxt-teases-voting-system-two-phase-transactions-and-a-foundation) and even government elections (https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/nxt-decentralized-voting-system-twitter/). This is very misleading and it appears that a lot of people think that Nxt's voting system is secure when it is not.

Quote from: kwilliams on June 07, 2015, 11:12:33 PM

Whereas I agree about the importance of anonymity in social voting, when it comes to business voting things are quite the opposite. A corporation is always an oligarchy, buying votes is the norm (it's called stake) and buying and selling influence (at the board) is how things get done.

Also let me remind you that in our republic (US of A) for the longest time the ballot was reserved to male property owners. And while the ballot was indeed anonymous - the real voting (taking place in Congress & Senate) has never been. Indeed all legislation an policy decisions to this day are passed in public (often televized) votes. And this is how most of the parliaments in the world operate.

So the idea that you must have anonymous voting for public governance is not entirely true. It only matters during the ballot, where indeed you may want to prevent explicit monetary transactions between the constituents and their Representative. Vote buying still takes place however ("I know how to bring the pork home and (unspoken) you'll all get a cut when it's here") which if not illegal is at least morally questionable