I firmly believe Blockchain voting is the future of true representation of the people, Asgardia could use it to form laws and articles of the Constitution that truly represent the wishes of its Citizens with a very high degree of transparency and credibility to minimize doubt and argument over the process!

Here is an interesting and credible example of how Government truly can represent the people.

"Notably, the Flux Party will be free of its own policies, instead opting for its senators to vote for or against legislation at the bidding of token holders.

New Australian Political Party Seeks to Popularize Blockchain Voting

http://www.coindesk.com/australian-political-party-blockchain-voting/

Party co-founder Max Kaye told the news source:

"If they didn't have to be senators, if they could just be software or robots they would be, because their only purpose is to do what the people want them to do."

At election time, the bitcoin-like tokens would be issued to Flux members – as well as single-issue campaigners that support the party. The tokens can then be used either use to vote, trade with others or give to trusted third parties to carry out proxy votes.

The results of the voting would be distributed proportionately – for example, with an 80% to 20% vote in favor of a bill, five Flux senators would vote for and one against."

Here is a list of others trialing or promoting blockchain voting including NASDAQ, Russia , Abu Dhabi, Delaware

http://www.coindesk.com/?s=voting

If you are tech inclined here is an example of how it works .In the opinion of many this is akin to the technological leap of the invention of the wheel for true representation of peoples wishes and as such I believe Asgardia should have a working group formed to study/ trial and make recommendantions on whether or how it should be adopted https://followmyvote.com/online-voting-technology/blockchain-technology/

Add useful resource http://www.bitcongress.org/

The senators seem extraneous, unless you are going for a territorial distribution like the electoral college, and the transferability of voter enfranchisement seems to unevenly distribute the electoral power of non-voters and open the potential for vote buying.

yes in the Australian example given senators are extraneous as currently the Australian system has Senators . As the quote suggests the senators voting role could equaly be performed by software . The system suggested has no need for representatives to cast a vote mandated by the will of the people in a blockchain vote. However someone will need to enact and enforce the legislation approved but that could be human administrators and law enforcement until a better option is created (AI?)

I will add some other examples

Liquid democracy currently being used by Parts of Germany and Denmark "Liquid Democracy: True Democracy for the 21st Century

Liquid Democracy, a subset of Delegative Democracy, is a powerful voting model for collective decision making in large communities. Liquid Democracy combines the advantages of Direct Democracy and Representative Democracy and creates a truly democratic voting system that empowers voters to either vote on issues directly, or to delegate ones voting power to a trusted party.

Through delegation, people with domain-specific knowledge are able to better influence the outcome of decisions, which in turn leads to an overall better governance of the state. Because of this, Liquid Democracy naturally evolves into a Meritocracy, where decisions are mainly made by those who have the kind of knowledge and experience required to make well-informed decisions on issues."

https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/liquid-democracy-true-democracy-for-the-21st-century-7c66f5e53b6f#.33ocfqjb7

http://www.shareable.net/blog/liquid-democracy-the-app-that-turns-everyone-into-a-politician

"LiquidFeedback (abbreviated lqfb) is free software for political opinion formation and decision making, combining aspects of representative and direct democracy. Its most important feature is the implementation of a delegated voting system ("liquid democracy") which is to establish a new form of political representation and participation that takes into account the knowledge disparity of its participants."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiquidFeedback

E-Democracy "E-democracy .... It is a form of government in which all adult citizens are presumed to be eligible to participate equally in the proposal, development, and creation of laws.[1] E-democracy encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy

Delegative Democracy where Liquid Democracy is a sub set

"The prototypical delegative democracy has been summarized by Bryan Ford in his paper, Delegative Democracy, as containing the following principles:[3]

Choice of Role: Each member can choose to take either a passive role as an individual or an active role as a delegate, differentiating this from representative forms in which only specified representatives are allowed. Delegates have further choices as to how active they are and in what areas.
Low Barrier to Participation: The difficulty and cost of becoming a delegate is small, and in particular does not require political campaigning or winning a competitive election.
Delegated Authority: Delegates exercise power in organizational processes on behalf of themselves and those individuals who select them as their delegate. Different delegates, therefore, can exercise varying levels of decision power.
Privacy of the Individual: To avoid social pressures or coercion, all votes made by individuals are private, both from other individuals and from delegates.
Accountability of the delegates: To ensure the accountability of delegates to their voters and to the community at large, all formal deliberative decisions made by delegates are completely public (or in some forms viewable only to their constituents).
Specialization by Re-Delegation: Delegates can not only act directly on behalf of individuals as generalists, but through re-delegation they can also act on behalf of each other as specialists.

Variations on this general model also exist, and this outline is only mentioned here for orientation within a general model."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy

With all examples above using blockchain as the voting method.

The main point is there are many modern models out there which are attempting to improve and correct the weaknesses and abuses of current systems and we should know/learn what they are and consider if they are what Asgardia as a Nation should adopt in some shape or format in the spirit of being at the forefont of human development.

Add ..if it was desiriable and I can certainly see the dangers of vote buying we could have a non transferable system where your vote is use it or lose it .

Having a blockchain doesn't intrinsically lend security, just complexity.

It's great for tracing financial transactions, but what does it really lend, security wise, to "voting" that couldn't be better achieved by PKCS-11/X.509 and a randomised token?

This was a bit above my "paygrade" so i had to look it up. It appears that it is an ultra secure high security cyptographic method of verification particulary for log ins which I assume is to verify that the user is the user and the data provided is from that user.

"Use cases are as follows:

Profile with Certificate Request On Demand

Secure Login Client (SLC) can use authentication mechanisms like user name and password or several other authentication mechanisms like RSA token. Dependent on the Secure Login Server profile the SLC integration of NWBC prompts you to enter your credentials in order to receive a short living user X.509 certificate to skip the Web-based logon process of NWBC.
Mobile User

A mobile user connects to his offline machine and then creates a VPN connection. In this case it is similar to use case 1. The SLC integration of NWBC is able to create a short living X.509 certificate to skip the Web-based logon and grants access to the SAP NetWeaver Application Server."

For security of users authentication this seems top of the line but i could not find and use cases on a blockchain .

what the blockchain brings Decentralization & Open Participation: Publicly Viewable Records: Highest Data Integrity Available:

"Once data is posted on to the blockchain it is there forever. It cannot be deleted or changed by anyone. Blockchain records are also timestamped and signed, so it is possible to prove the source of data as well as the date/time when the data was uploaded. Just like the data itself can’t be deleted or changed, the timestamp cannot be spoofed either. And due to the decentralized nature of blockchains, everything is replicated tens of thousands of times over, distributed on computers all over the world, virtually guaranteeing against data loss." this may need to be adjusted to given your reference to PKCS-11/X.509 and a randomised token..to....Highest Data integrity ever..for a publicly distributed ledger

" The Economist called it “the trust machine” and they are absolutely correct. The blockchain is all about trust."

https://medium.com/@blocktechcorp/what-is-the-blockchain-why-does-it-help-secure-elections-59f8db2b3642#.etfkwlau2

However given the potential and claims of blockchain voting promoters which have yet to be clearly refuted and arguably both refuting them and proving them are not simple tasks I would still strongly recommned a working group be established to study , evaluate and recommend if any use of blockchain in voting, finance, administration , governance or any other field where accumulating , checking, verifying , transparent and keeping permanent tamper proof records are required.

The EU is looking at it so maybe we should as well. https://dcebrief.com/eu-parliament-looks-to-blockchain-for-election-platform/

The Nasdaq report from Jan 23 2017 http://business.nasdaq.com/marketinsite/2017/Is-Blockchain-the-Answer-to-E-voting-Nasdaq-Believes-So.html

"Where do We Stand Today?

We currently have a functioning proof of concept (PoC) with four web-based user interfaces in Estonia. The PoC can now identify users based on their Estonian digital ID – either via Estonian ID card or e-Residency card."

I will add that the E residency and digital ID of Estonia in the above article is also interesting and appears to be an option for Asgardia.

It's used commonly for login purposes, as it's a great and secure authentication mechanism. Yes, it's both for confirming the input and the user as well as allowing for encryption to shield from prying in the case of intercept. The idea is you use this - a defined, well tested athentication mechanism. As opposed to a much newer, lesser tested technology for ledgering financial transactions.

It's possible to poision blockchains - easier if you hold a high percentage of nodes. There's no assurances against data loss, really. As evidenced by all the "problems" experienced by quite a lot of the major coin exchanges.

For voting, it makes absolutlely no sense. It adds in tens of thousands of cycles, for no clear gain. It also ledgers the entire process, leading to me being able to find out what you voted for. This then opens up to me knowing if you've voted the way I paid you to and therefore makes buying votes possible.