Citadel Dispatch

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EPISODE: 128
BLOCK: 841388
PRICE: 1586 sats per dollar
TOPICS: election integrity, verifiability, hashes, timestamps, experiences on the ground in Guatemala, using this method in America

project websites: https://digitalwitness.io + https://film.simpleproof.com/

Carlos on nostr: https://primal.net/p/npub14advhxua8w78gl2z7q8c4s20htxkzq4cu5mhj34ep0puf7smyqzszrd7qq

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nostr account: ⁠https://primal.net/odell⁠
youtube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@citadeldispatch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
stream sats to the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fountain.fm/

(00:00:03) CNN Intro Clip

(00:01:32) Introduction to Bitcoin Monday and discussion on securing elections with Bitcoin

(00:07:41) Discussion on the election process in Guatemala and the use of blockchain technology for election auditing

(00:41:58) Tutorial on number guessing and advanced tutorials on mobile screens

(00:43:00) Gamifying election audits and engaging young people in democracy

(01:00:00) Importance of election integrity and the role of Bitcoin in protecting elections

(01:19:13) Expressions of gratitude and upcoming events announcement

(01:20:29) Sentiments about love and care

(01:23:42) Closing remarks and farewell

[00:00:04] Unknown:

Assess the economy,   through the economic indicators and data that we all report on. Constantly, they assess it through how they feel about it. 34%   currently   approve   of Biden's handling of the economy, so significantly lower than his overall job approval, 66%   disapprove. And when you ask, how is the economy going today? What's your rating of it? 30%   30% of Americans say it's good. 70%   of Americans   say it's poor. I just wanna note here that   the economy is overwhelmingly   the most important issue, for voters. This is not insignificant. And so, while there are a ton of other issues that we discussed and even issues that the president performs worse on, the Israel,   Hamas war, immigration,   the economy is still front and center for people. So this is something you're gonna hear Biden talk about day in and day out to try to boost those numbers up as well.  



[00:01:32] ODELL:

Happy Bitcoin Monday, freaks. Almost forgot which day of the week it was. It's your host, Odell, here for another Citadel Dispatch, the interactive   live   show focused on actionable Bitcoin and Freedom   Tech discussion.   I have a good friend here to join us, here live from the studios at Bitcoin Park in Nashville. I always love the live rips.   Carlos Toriello.   We're gonna be talking about securing   elections   with Bitcoin.   How's it going, Carlos?   I don't know what that means, but I appreciate it.  

[00:02:12] Carlos Toriello:

Great to be here. I really love what you're doing with the park, and, I'm just, happy   to be a small cog in the wheel.   Park's pretty cool. It's awesome. If you haven't got to check it out, you should.  

[00:02:24] ODELL:

Let's fucking go.   So, I mean, this is a this is a bit of a change of pace, from my usual conversation,   or my usual conversations here on dispatch.   But we've been talking for a long time about what you're doing, and it's it's it's a concept that I have found fascinating,   for years.   I remember   I remember when I was a naive   early Bitcoiner,   like, a decade ago. I was like, blockchain's gonna solve   elections,   and I was so fucking wrong. There are so many issues with doing blockchain based voting. That is not what we're talking about here, which is why I'm so excited about it. But it's, all those different caveats that exist and trade offs that exist, I I've gone down that rabbit hole myself.   And so when you came to me and and and explained what your new project was,   I was really fascinated by it. So,   I guess let's start with   the the work you've done, how you look at it. Like, what what are we talking about here? Sure.  



[00:03:31] Carlos Toriello:

So,   the work is called Digital Witness in English,   but it started out in Spanish called   and the reason it's called   Digital Witness is because fiscal digital is not what we're talking about.   And what it is is,   digital witness is my proposal to audit   elections.   And I think that by doing so and and looking back on it, what I've think I've proven   with Guatemala last year   is that,   whatever your feelings about democracy,   I will not tell you,   to believe in it. I have my own conflicting thoughts about it. It would be its own rip.   But my my thoughts as a Bitcoiner is   the elections and and voting is   inherently a a consensus algorithm   that eventually leads to some decision   reached by a bunch of people.  

And so I just see it as an opportunity   to reach normies   and precoiners   with a very different message   to Bitcoin   around,   truth   and   show them and give them a a a new touch point,   and basically turn elections into a little machine that creates more Bitcoiners.  

[00:04:55] ODELL:

I And also, I mean, it brings, like, the don't trust verify ethos to   existing election processes.  

[00:05:02] Carlos Toriello:

Well and, you know, it's recognizing that historically, don't trust verify was always a part of democracy.   It's more of just, like, over time, that obviously gets eroded away. But,   if you go back to any initial democracy, the first time you had elections, everyone was   verifying instead of trusting. Right? Because if you don't trust verify,   then you can actually believe what you're looking at as, instead of what we've kind of   been pushed into, which is just, don't verify and trust. Right. And so   I I believe that what I've proven in the case of Guatemala is that   if we see democracies and specifically the   voting around democracies   as an opportunity   to   prove that Bitcoin is useful,   then it provides touch points to people   that,   are different from the strictly sound money argument. And I love folks making the sound money argument. Right. I just think we're kind of reaching the edges of it.  

People will come from some money because fiat will inevitably destroy people's lives and they'll eventually find Bitcoin.   But I do think there's a a truth argument   to make with Bitcoin. And, I find it important to take that fight. You know, we we should use every opportunity we can to reach people with with this message. And, you know, one of the arguments I always make is that,  

[00:06:29] ODELL:

we're living in a post truth world now. Like, people don't know what to believe,   and Bitcoin is the exception to that rule. Right? And, and not just Bitcoin, but just   signed messages in general. And that's one of the reasons I'm so excited about Noster.   Just cryptographically   verifiable signed messages   is truth in a in a post truth world. But so, I mean, what we're talking about here is kinda cool because first of all, it's not theoretical.   You've already done it in Guatemala.   The second thing that I find cool here is   you're not asking,   millions of people to change their election processes.  

You're you're looking at the existing election processes, and you're saying, okay. How can we add,   more reliability here? How can we add,   more verifiability,   have more truth to the to the existing system without actually really changing much   in how people interact,   with their,   you know, their local voting schemes. So let's talk about what happened in Guatemala, how you how you implemented in Guatemala, what was the what were you trying to solve,   and how'd you do it? Excellent. So,  

[00:07:43] Carlos Toriello:

the backstory is   Guatemala   next door to El Salvador,   Central American country. It's where I was born and raised. And   we have a voting system that is   manned by a citizen army of voluntary citizens.   It is a beautiful   experience that I had the opportunity to be a part of in 2,011   and 2,015   as a volunteer at the tables.   What differentiates Guatemala to basically most voting systems is that it's an organic just,   you know, you call your neighbor, you people just   organically   call each other   and,   find reliable people to join this citizen army. And so   our 9,000,000 voters   are assigned to voting tables based on their, you know, registered address   and it turns into about 400 people per voting table.  

And when you show up, it's your neighbor that's, you know, welcoming you, gives your ballots, you   take the paper and you get a crayon and you hand, you know, just whatever you choose to mark on the ballot. And then you deposit the ballot yourself into a, you know, plastic bag that allows   anyone   to see what's going on. And and there's witnesses   present. There's just it's a massive amount of people that's mobilized.   The last numbers in 2023 was over 200, maybe even 300,000   people   simultaneously   doing the voting system at these 25,000   tables Okay. Wow. Nationwide.  

4,200,000   people actually bothered to show up to vote. How much was the population? 18,000,000 give or take. Good. Bunch of migrants in the states and so we kinda stopped doing the census. So it's probably more, but You just gave up on the census? Yeah. The state just, you know, can't do it anymore. And so Fair enough. Well, there's a bunch of reasons why, but, yeah, no more census. And so we 10 years ago, just kinda reached 18, and that's where we're at.   9,200,000   registered voters, 4.2 actually bothered to show up to vote. Yeah. And over 200,000   are at the voting tables. Right. They're volunteers. They're the volunteers. Running the election. Running the election and also by a sign sent by the political parties competing in the election. So that they can Verify what's keep each other honest. Exactly. And so when when you do the numbers, it's, like,   over 5%   of the voting, you know, population   is running the voting system. Right. It's it's a large number of of the voting population.  

Right? And so   at the table, when people cast their ballots,   you were similar. And I was a part of that. Like, I I was that neighbor that you showed up to and, like, I gave you your thing and I, you know, convinced a bunch of my friends to do this with me. And it's this hard work that you have to do throughout the entire voting day. You're technically a mayor for a day so that if the cops show up and you committed a crime, the cops have to wait outside   until you finish your your job. Right? Like Oh, wow. Okay. Like, you have jurisdiction as a mayor for a day, and your jurisdiction is your table. Right? No one can take you away from there until your work is done. Okay. And so as people are pouring in, you know, eventually, 6 PM rolls   around, the center is is shut down and you take out the plastic bags from under the table, you dump it out. These are all paper ballots. Everything's paper. Everything is paper. Yeah. We carry out 5 elections simultaneously.  

So it's 5 ballots that people cast   on the 1st election day, then there's a runoff. But, you know, the first time you do this, it's   5 bags that are that are under the table. Everyone's around, and everyone can see this happening. And at the end, you dump the bag out and you literally just go 1 by 1 in front of in front of the witnesses Right. Saying, alright. You know, blue party,   red party,   green party,   yellow party, and you just You literally count them by hand. Literally count them by hand in front of people, making it that that moment, that,   space in that table   turns into the only place where you can challenge individual ballots. Right. And once that tally is reached,   you handwrite those totals   on a document   that is your proof of work. Right. Right? And so   that document that summarizes the totals at the table is actually the legal document of the election system. Then you calculate national  

[00:12:10] ODELL:

results from all of those individual documents. So we we turn the, you know,  

[00:12:16] Carlos Toriello:

9,000,000 votes into   25,000   documents Okay. Containing those 9,000,000 votes. Right. And, you know, while I was doing this in 2,011 and 15 and eventually came back in 2019 as a witness,   I realized what this is what this is is is a physical, you know, paper,   proof of work consensus algorithm. Right. Right. Like, I I I now see the volunteers, the people that receive the ballots and and do the work as kind of mining nodes in this network.   And then the political party witnesses are validating nodes. They can't touch any of the votes, but if they see anything   wrong,   they can issue, you know, challenges. And   that process leads to this very, you know, what I consider   an an an an, a system that has integrity. Right? Because it's Up until that point. Up until that point, you have everything that you need to make sure that there was no funny   stuff as long as people participated. Right? They're Well, you have, like, the good old fashioned,  

[00:13:17] ODELL:

like, game theory of  

[00:13:20] Carlos Toriello:

a a bunch of people there that disagree on things, and they're all keeping each other on it. Exactly. Right. Right? And so as long as parties the political parties bother to send people Right. Then there should be people keeping each other honest. Now if there are places where people literally don't care about the results anymore, then  

[00:13:37] ODELL:

democracy does die in darkness. So this is the key. Right? It's like you're not trying to solve that problem. You're not trying to solve everything. Okay? So we're at this point, we have these 25,000 documents.  

[00:13:46] Carlos Toriello:

And so then what happens is they get scanned   Okay. By some scanner   posted on the Internet,   and the election authorities invite folks to say, see, we are transparent.   Everything's Right. Published on the Internet.   Anyone can just download these documents   and verify for themselves   that the totals   match the individual   25,000   Exactly. Tables. Per election. Right. And so we've got 5 of these. And so, you know, I fell in love with this process. It's very magical. And I was, you know, like you said, like, a naive, you know, person back back in the day saying, like, wow, democracy is so beautiful.   Then what happened was in 2019,   my dad and a cousin of mine ran for congress and asked for my help. And so I evolved from being a volunteer at the table to being a political party witness. Okay. And, in 2019,   I was plugged into the system seeing what they were doing in real time.  

And   that election, we were supposed to have a 100,000 documents come in.   And   I'm plugged into the to the, you know, FTP server that they're using.   And instead of going from 0 to a 100000,   what I witness is 0 to 10000 down to 5, up to 25, down to 10, up to 50 down to 20,000. Wow. The actual JPEG files that, you know Right. Are being produced by these tables. And then up to a 101,000,   which is what they were supposed to be and then down to 0 and the the website crashes publicly and, you know, for the first time in 40 years in in 2019 in Guatemala, there were serious,   election fraud accusations,   not just by, you know, the fringe candidates that lost, but all actually by all of the candidates around the spectrum.  

And so,   yes.  

[00:15:35] ODELL:

I was just pointing that we got a zap. Woo hoo. Thank you, sir. It's pretty cool seeing it coming live. Right? So yeah. The biggest problem with elections is the move away from in person voting politicians. Yeah. We're gonna talk about all these freaks, by the way. The reason Carlos is here in America talking on this show, which is awesome because it's a global show. We have an audience around the world, is because he wants to,   hopefully, bring this to the US. So we're gonna talk all about,   the different implications   of of the US election process. But first, let's let's get through what he's done in Guatemala, how, like, what his process is there, and then we'll get to all your questions. Appreciate it.  



[00:16:12] Carlos Toriello:

So I saw in real time in 2019, the election system crashing   and getting rebooted and and just   it it was like standing under, you know, the Niagara Falls with a water cup trying to, you know, get something. It's like it was it was a deluge of nonsense   and lies that followed in the next couple of days. And so, I realized it's a massive OCR problem, and we could solve it. And so I built So when he says,  

[00:16:39] ODELL:

OCR, that's optical character recognition. Yes. And and, specifically, what he means is these are handwritten   documents,   so they're not digital native documents.   And then they're scanned into a picture file,   and so so computers can't necessarily   recognize what those numbers are. So it makes tallying those 25 not 1,000   documents,   quite difficult and time consuming.   So you need to be able to, first of all, translate that handwriting   into actual   digital files that you can work with and tally them up. And then second of all I mean, I guess this is where we're going as well is you have to maintain the integrity of those documents   so that you know those JPEGs haven't been altered in the first place.  

And and both of those were were incredibly lacking  

[00:17:31] Carlos Toriello:

before your project came around. Exactly. So in 2019, I'm attempting to do this. I published open source quote that I get you know, become a little viral, and so we've got a bunch of people helping us do this. To audit the election. Exactly. Auditing Through their process. Digital Witness doesn't exist yet. You're trying to make it happen. Well, we we created it. We we called it Digital Witness in in Spanish, and and we just called into the Internet, just open it up as a crowdsourced,   program, and over 1500 people are logging in to to help us do this. So literally like look at a JPEG be like 14 votes, 15 votes, like writing it down, typing it up. Exactly. Typing everything up, just doing, you know,   pouring through hundreds of thousands of documents   to see whether or not what they're saying is true or not.  

And yeah. So what I realized is,   you know, a buddy of mine is a lawyer and he said, well, so if if you end up publishing,   you know, contradicting results,   the letter of the law says that this is treason.   Nice.   So it's like, well   but on the other hand, what the authorities were saying is, oh, we're gonna look at documents, like, one one at a time with everyone there. It's like you're you're running the numbers of what the authorities are proposing, and it's like, it's gonna take them 48 months if they work 247.   By design. And so it's like that that that this is this is a shit show.  

The other interesting, you know, side note there is   it's as an OCR problem. The I would argue the the most famous   OCR technology in the world is CAPTCHA.   Right. CAPTCHA was invented by a Guatemalan.  

[00:18:59] ODELL:

Oh, nice. I didn't know that. Yeah. The guy's name is Luis Von Ahn. One One of the things I love about small countries, by the way, is you guys know all the random facts about who   who who you had invent certain things.  

[00:19:11] Carlos Toriello:

The reason Luis Vonan is you know, the after inventing CAPTCHA and selling it to Google Yeah. He started a little company called Duolingo   Oh, I've heard of that one. Which, you know, some people may may know about. 2nd fact about Guatemala. And so Luis Vonan is the most famous tech entrepreneur that Guatemala has ever produced. He still own Duolingo, or can he sell that too? It's a public company now? Oh, shit. Really? Yeah. He Good for him. Yeah. He went public right around the time this whole shit happened. So, actually, originally, before building the tools, with my team as open source, I reached out to him.   And he was like, dude, I'm too busy, like, like, taking my my company public, but good on you. I'm one of the top, like, learn how to speak other language apps in the world. I I can't I can't help you. So but but at least he get he provided feedback saying you're you're onto something. Right?  

But base the reason I bring that up is it seemed to me, like, just the extreme irony of seeing the Guatemalan,   Democratic Republic   fall   because we didn't know how to use CAPTCHA.   It just like, it was too much for me to bear. Wait. So let's just explain real quick.  

[00:20:18] ODELL:

Probably most of what is CAPTCHA?  

[00:20:21] Carlos Toriello:

CAPTCHA, I forget what the, you know, letters stand for. It's not It's an acronym.   Yeah. It's it's   it's a funky acronym. Doesn't matter. What is CAPTCHA? CAPTCHA is what,   Google and other machines,   use to   give you some kind of work   to prove that you're human. It's an annoying thing when you're on a VPN and it says, are you human? Like, click the bicycles or type out what this word is. Now what Google is doing is using CAPTCHA to you know, it's actually called Image recognition. ReCAPTCHA. So they they it started out as CAPTCHA. Now it's called reCAPTCHA.   And what they're doing is you're every time you do work for them to prove you're human, you're training the AI so that it They're killing 2 birds with 1 stone. They're supposed to stop spam for the,  

[00:21:05] ODELL:

like, potential DDoS spam for the website host, but at the same time, you're training the robots.   And it's this horrible virtual   this is horrible  

[00:21:15] Carlos Toriello:

feedback loop where as you train the robots to be better, they have to get more and more annoying   about the challenges they give us because the robots can solve it because we fucking train them.   So but the cool thing is the output is but, like, if you do this, you can actually make the output useful. And so I remember when CAPTCHA was first introduced   is, you actually saw 2 words.   And so the original CAPTCHA   was used   to digitize   all books.   Right? So, you know, the   all the books were scanned and you had these, you know, JPEG files with Right. You know   words. And what we did initially was turn those words   into digital   data that then Google could, you know,   use its search function. To parse. Yeah. That's why CAPTCHA was purchased by Google. And so we turned all this JPEG information into, you know, useful digital data. So I was just like, how is Guatemala gonna fail as a democratic republic because we can't learn how to use our own fucking technology? I'm sorry. I I don't know if I You're good. No. We curse on the show. Right up. So I was, for  

[00:22:24] ODELL:

a while. A couple episodes, I tried not to. These people were like, I listen with the kids in the car, and I just, up. So, you know, my grandmother asked me how, like, how do you not get kicked off the radio with with language like that? I was like,   oh,   you sweet summer child.   They're that thing. It's it's a podcast. There's Internet. No one cares anymore. Yeah. And so, anyway,  

[00:22:47] Carlos Toriello:

basically,   it's an OCR problem.   Right. I was frustrated that we didn't do it, so I just built an open source tool that did it.   But, I failed miserably in 2019   for many reasons. And so I was extremely frustrated.   And then finally,   I was like, alright. I'm just gonna wait. I'm gonna lower my time preference. I'm going to, you know,   pray at the altar of satoshi every day   and just   lie in wait. And so   I couldn't stop what madness happened in 2019. I still believe that they were probably stolen. But the thing about when you think that you got stolen in case of elections is   the   responsibility is on you. You have to prove   what you're saying. Right? And if you make   sweeping judgments without proof, then you're gonna get labeled as an election denier.  

And, you know, eventually if you you might even get thrown to jail. Right? So,   I had to think from an, you know, the worst case scenario. And so,   basically, we   actually, that's when I met you, in the Human Rights Foundation event in Miami. I I went there with a specific goal of figuring out, like, there's gotta be more tools in Bitcoin that can help me do this. And, I met the folks from Stackwork,   at the Human Rights Foundation. I realized there's this tool that is basically kind of like this awesome. Their whole team's awesome. Stack work is is amazing. And and you can build these workflows that allow people to just over their phones do work, which is what I was doing. But in this case, you can turn that work into Satoshis. And so So you literally just pay them sets to type the numbers   from the JPEG. And so all you need to do is get the JPEGs.  

In our case, they're published to the Internet. Right. And that's where we can, you know You want me to pull it up? Yeah, please. While we have this,  

[00:24:45] ODELL:

so   we are gonna be showing some things on screen, so I will be moving away from the live chat just momentarily. But,   we will come back to the live chat, so keep and we're watching the live chat. Also, Frieks, I know some of you have been zapping.   I just checked my note. I have been receiving the zaps, so don't worry. The sats are not going,   to the, you know,   the the zaps are arriving at their destination.   This is one of those constant trade offs that we think about,   with Bitcoin   where,   of course, if I use my own node, sometimes the zaps don't show up on the stream.   Are we are we pulling up Stackwork, or are we just pulling up the other side? The other side. Yeah.  

But,   I've I've I just switched my,   my my lightning address to,   the primal custodial wallet, which once again is, like, now using a custodial wallet, but at least your zaps will show up, and I'll send them to self custody afterwards.   But thank you thank you for supporting the show. Okay. Carlos, we're on,  

[00:25:48] Carlos Toriello:

this is the government website of Guatemala. Right? This is the elections authority website of Guatemala. You can click on the box that said   that one. So this   is how the JPEGs are produced in Guatemala.   There's this you know, some folks might recognize this. It's there's a map and there's, you know, tables. I mean, I understand there's problems with that you're solving, but I have to say, like,   it's pretty cool that they have a website Yep. And this stuff.   I think there are some in like, there's a tradition of publishing this in general democracy. I don't know if you have this in the United   States. I believe there there are similar ones. I I have yet to see I think it's just like CNN and shit with their, like, dumbass graphics. Well, election authorities like, some someone should have this. But, it's still, like, just cool database, bro. Like, how do you trust this? Yeah. But it also it's like, yeah, it's  

[00:26:39] ODELL:

it's like it's they're able to say, like, look how transparent we are, but there's actually no verification whatsoever. It's just literally just numbers on the website. Well, they're used to well, I don't know. So let's continue. So what what do you want me to do here? So there's a little text box that you can write any number between 125,000.  

[00:26:55] Carlos Toriello:

42. And so instead of looking at national numbers, what this allows is for us to drill down into one of those 25,000. We're on table 42. Right. And so if you go down, there's, like, cool database pro, but there is a   button, that says,   ver and which is This is look There you go. Or verify.   And,   it actually pulls up the document that emanated from table number 42 in the presentation. This is the actual handwritten document. This is the handwritten JPEG. And so I can just build a little web crawler   and just rip these off off of the website as soon as they're being published.   The back end. But anyone can do this. Actually, there's a bunch of people do just like download this and then go on Twitter since the JPEG. Yep.  

And so the problem was what in 2019, what was happening is these were changing.  

[00:27:58] ODELL:

It's  

[00:28:01] Carlos Toriello:

like they were changing.   I couldn't,   you know, check   exactly how they were changing, but they were changing.   So,   we built a system to, know, we use the we discovered the open timestamps protocol Okay. Which, a little side note there for folks. I don't know if what your recollection is of how this   protocol was built, Matt. I'm curious that that, you know, your history of of, open time stamps. But it's essentially developed by Peter Todd and allows   us to use Bitcoin. It's it's it's I would I call it a compromise between, you know, the money maximalist   and the data storage people that wanna put all the data in the in the blockchain. Open timestamps is kind of the compromise because it's the minimalist version of using Bitcoin. So you essentially, what open timestamps does is  

[00:28:53] ODELL:

is you take a hash of a file. So every file   has a unique hash.   You just simply run it through shot 256. It gives you   this long string   of characters. Right? And that that is unique. If that file gets changed at all, it's a different hash.   So it proves that a file has not been changed. If you listened to,   the recent dispatch,   with Stewart and Hazard about Blossom on Nostr,   It's a similar concept. You use the hash to prove that a file has not been changed, and it's very easy to verify.   And then Open Timestamps takes it a step further.   And they take that hash, and they put that hash in the Bitcoin blockchain.  

So you can tell that this hash existed at this time. So it gives you 2 key points of verification, that the the file   when the hash was taken and that it the file hasn't changed since that point in time. Right? Which is,  

[00:29:49] Carlos Toriello:

dramatic for election auditing. Right. Because, like I said, if my audit   produced contradictory   results,   I could be thrown in jail. Right. So I would have to prove that yourself that you didn't change that JPEG. That the audit that I did was based on official documents. If the official documents There was no way for you to prove that before this existed. Exactly. And so,   then,   this other group that was inspired by,   what I did in 2019,   created a startup called Simple Proof and sold the election authority   on adding a very, you know, conspicuously   orange button   to this page that says verify hash.  

You literally got them to open timestamps to hash. Open   timestamps to JPEG. Exactly. All of them. Every JPEG. All 25,000 JPEG. Everything that they gave us access to, which was these JPEGs, we tried to get access to a little bit more. But so what happens is,   when you click on that, it'll take you to   the   an additional contractor that is doing this via open time stamps who's showing you here's the shot 256 of that individual document. Here's the time stamp of when they got it, plus the time stamp of   when Bitcoin   registered that transaction.  



[00:31:08] ODELL:

So you can also see, like, how Wait. Wait. We're on a new tab, so I'm not sharing this tab anymore. Wait. Let me Share this tab instead. So the freaks don't see what we're looking at.   I think you can just click the share. Right. No. I'm just instead of switching tabs, I'm just gonna put it in this tab. Here we go. Yeah. So you see the SHA 256 hash.  

[00:31:28] Carlos Toriello:

You see the block that it happened and the time that it happened. But additional, on on at the top, it's the timestamp of when it came into the private database of simple proof. And so you can use both of these time stamps   to determine   how long did these documents take before they were put on Bitcoin. Because that's the that's the scary  

[00:31:47] ODELL:

point in time. Right? That If they've left the table,   and they're getting they're getting Scanned. They're getting verified, and they're getting, Scanned. Yeah, scanned and put into the blockchain. How long The document themselves not getting put in the blockchain. The hash is getting put in the blockchain. Mhmm. The hash is putting into the into the blockchain, but the point is you what you do wanna try to determine is how long did that take. Right? Right. Because if it takes a reasonable amount of time,  

[00:32:14] Carlos Toriello:

say for example, a wrap, you know, less than 60 minutes   and usually the average should be, you know, around 10 because that's how long the blocks work.   Then you can immediately determine the,   a kind of health indicator of the entire election. Right. Because if you have a document that took 6 hours more, then you're like, what well, what happened there? You know, there needs to be an explanation. And so,   all of this is made public. You get an additional database that you can   documents against. But if you go further down Scroll. You know, scroll down Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. You click on where it says.  

[00:32:53] ODELL:

Okay. We're we're we're verifying the Merkle tree. And so  

[00:32:58] Carlos Toriello:

we you know, you can download the OTS file, which has all the Thank you. Yeah. All the gnarly, you know, cryptographic proofs, but we then   they built this where if you go all the way to the bottom of that Merkle, you know, tree, you can see the root hash. You click on the on the one on the left because it's sort of highlighted. So to say, you see that hash? That's actually the same hash that we were looking at earlier. Right? F 42e1.  

[00:33:24] ODELL:

Let's see.   F 42eone.  

[00:33:27] Carlos Toriello:

There you go. There you go. And so it's showing you   where that hash is  

[00:33:33] ODELL:

and then showing you how the Merkle tree, you know, hashing that open Well, to be clear, the reason open timestamps uses Merkle trees is because they wanna reduce the impact,   both the fee rate that is paid by the the person that's trying to,   put the hash and and create the open time stamp, but also, like, decrease the burden on on the blockchain itself. The whole idea is, like, how can we have verifiable data   without bloating the blockchain? So, like, I know, like, it's a hot topic right now,   like, storing data on Bitcoin.   This is done in the most efficient way possible, and you're not actually install you're not actually storing   the data itself on the blockchain. You're you're storing, like, the verifiability of it the verifiability  

[00:34:17] Carlos Toriello:

of it. And it's   all of the data. So let's pretend like   on on election night in Guatemala, we had a 125,000   documents created.   So maybe there was one moment in a 10 minute interval where there were 10,000 documents. Yep. All of those 10,000 documents are reduced to a single hash on a single transaction.   And so,   instead of, you know, bloating the blockchain, it's just a single transaction per per block,   that could contain 100 of thousands of of documents. But   doing that eliminates   99%  

[00:34:52] ODELL:

of the attack surface that election. Beautiful about it. It's, like, you're not trying to solve everything.   It's just like, okay. Like, up until the point where the tables   create   the 25,000   different,   districts are, like, creating their tabulations   to the point where it's posted online,   and even after the point is posted online, that that up until the tables   and it's first uploaded is pretty pretty good. Yep. It's pretty good in the current state. Let's just   make it that state permanently   Exactly. Rather than allow it to be altered after that point. So you're not not trying to solve everything.   It's just, like, very actionable.  



[00:35:31] Carlos Toriello:

It's it's it's something that can be solved relatively easily and cleanly. Cheaply. Yeah. And so a a few few things there is it's the the gold standard of elections   by any self respecting computer scientist Yeah. Is paper.  

[00:35:46] ODELL:

A 100 we're gonna we're gonna talk about this when we get to the US, but yes. And so but Paper's amazing. The problem is when  

[00:35:54] Carlos Toriello:

those results and whatever mechanism you have from jumping from paper,   computing the result and publishing   all up and then also the verification of that. And publishing to the Internet. Right? So it's the our our whole point here is if   that process from going   from the analog which is secure to digital,   You go through the filter that is Bitcoin. Right. Then on the other side, it'll be   insignificantly   cheap   to verify   and distinguish real information. Right. Have independent parties be able to audit it. In a trustless way. You still need an independent party to be able to audit it. And so it's In this case, I would say trust minimized, but yes. Yeah. Trust minimized in in that but so that because time stamping isn't new. What's new is if you actually use Bitcoin,   then  

[00:36:42] ODELL:

the authorities are saying, yes. You can use access to our database, and people have had access to it. Bug with the timestamp, you would have to you would have to reorg the Bitcoin blockchain, which is incredibly to do. And it's all open source protocol. You can't use a shitcoin for it because the shitcoins are all centralized. So Exactly. You could just reorg I mean, maybe not the Guatemalan government, but if you were going for bigger governments, they could just reorg stuff. And so what you're doing is eliminating  

[00:37:08] Carlos Toriello:

the election tampering   on a attack surface   to a single moment in time, which is the beginning.   Literally, as it's happening.   What that means for anyone trying to mess with elections is that they're gonna have to take significant risks   that if if they have to jam all their, you know, fraud into once, you know, small moment on election night Good luck.   You're probably gonna fuck up. Yeah. And when people have to do things quickly and they fuck up, that's when you catch them. Right. And so the best, you know, on the one hand, Bitcoiners have criticized maybe because it's like, oh, this is going to be expensive, etcetera. It's like, it's really not. It's just one transaction per block. And, like, the alternative is way more expensive. Exactly. Like, for a country's democracy, it's worth paying for this.   And then the election deniers accuse me of whitewashing election fraud. Right.  

And to that, I I say,  

[00:38:03] ODELL:

if they are They're doing the opposite. You can verify yourself.  

[00:38:06] Carlos Toriello:

Well, let's let's pretend like someone was able to mess with the JPEGs before they were were scanned, and then they put them up here. All that that person has done is committed a crime   in a tamper proof,   you   know, system that anyone can audit. So you now have criminals providing   forensic evidence   that you can actually use to create   sound arguments based on cryptography and math Right. As opposed to political opinions about what happened to the election.   And so this   it only benefits   people who want truth. Right. It makes it harder for those that want to create.   And so, the way that, the folks in the election authority decided to to consume this was because they figured, well, AI has made it,   ridiculously cheap to make fake documents like the these. And now they have a cheap way   to cover their ass on one on the one side, but then obviously   differentiate   in the case that,   elections are attacked with artificial intelligence   in coordinated misinformation,   disinformation attacks.  



[00:39:16] ODELL:

And so yeah. I mean So this is this is how the,   this is one piece of the puzzle. Right? So so now we know the JPEGs aren't being modified after the fact. So, like, the government in charge sees that they're losing the election, and they start altering JPEGs. Now they can't do that without it being obvious. Exactly.   And but then the other piece is is the OCR piece. It's like, okay. So, like, how do we I now we have verifiable JPEGs,   but how do we turn those JPEGs into something that you can put in an Excel spreadsheet and actually add up exactly. And so  

[00:39:52] Carlos Toriello:

first thing is, like you said, I would call it an anchor of truth. Right? Right. Now we can actually hold on to reality   and work on something that's not shifting. And this is where Stackwork comes in. Right? Exactly. And so, the folks at Stackwork were awesome and so we built this little tool.   The way I did it was I had a website where,   I basically marketed to young people   and, election deniers   and said, we don't trust the election either. The only way to trust is to verify. So join us, and all people needed to do was, you know, submit their phone number. I would send them an SMS message with a code   and access to this, website. And so when they came in, it's a very obvious, you know, process. It's all intuitive. You just click start. And so it's it's it's a mobile native. So all you need to do is I don't I don't think you're showing it. I am showing it. I'm looking at it on my screen. Oh, great. So, you know, we just handhold people through,  

[00:40:48] ODELL:

until Our task is to enter the handwritten value. Are we doing this right now? It's just click through, but the point is we Am I am I am I getting paid for this? Yeah. Yeah. So what am I I'm supposed to oh, they're, they're telling me the tutorial. So Oh, okay. We we assume the people were not gonna know how to do this, so you just need to click next. Well, I'm I'm learning.   Okay. So I I have to press I have to do 22   Avanza. No. O o two. Yep. Oh, this the number on the right is what I'm supposed to do. Exactly. So it's showing you if it's blank, you know, fill the number with 0.  

[00:41:22] Carlos Toriello:

0. And so for folks that are just listening This is 021.  

[00:41:26] ODELL:

Exactly. Because I need to do 3 digits no matter what. Exactly. We're looking at yeah. If you're just listening, we're looking at essentially the tutorial process that   a a human robot who's, like, putting in   the numbers. Okay. This would be as you can see, if you're watching the stream,   this is how difficult this problem is to solve,   which is why, like, AI is not doing it and why it's it's humans getting paid sats that are doing it. Well,  

[00:41:54] Carlos Toriello:

it gets gnarly fast. Okay. So, like, are they asking me to enter this? No. No. No. No. This is still a tutorial. It's like, if you can't   guess what the number is, just write hash, hash, hash. Okay. Because there's plenty of times when people make mistakes. Hash, hash, hash. Yeah. It's like if you can't really read it  

[00:42:12] ODELL:

easily This is a pretty advanced tutorial.   Yeah.   Let me just I'm I'm zooming this. I think it's like there you go.  

[00:42:22] Carlos Toriello:

Is this it's for a mobile screen. Is that the idea? For mobile. Yeah. Mobile native.   And so,   basically,  

[00:42:29] ODELL:

they're just, like, telling me all the different scenarios.  

[00:42:32] Carlos Toriello:

Yep. And so that you do need to zoom in a little bit because it's asking you for 168.  

[00:42:40] ODELL:

Yep. No. That's a good zoom. This is a good enter the handwritten value.   This is important. Like, we're doing this is this actually getting entered?   006 is the right number. I don't know where you got that. 16 oh, they're asking me what is the total for that,   6. Alright? Where are we actually we're we're verifying the election right now.  

[00:43:01] Carlos Toriello:

Well,   we already verified the election. Okay. So we're not. What what you're doing is going through our tutorial, which   so I'm not actually What? Anybody. No. Well So 257. It's supposed to be 257. Exactly. Yeah. So we what we've done is I'm good at this. Gamified  

[00:43:17] ODELL:

election audit. Plus 2 on the top. So Okay. Or 74. I got This is how you get  

[00:43:22] Carlos Toriello:

young people   to do really boring work.   You gamify it,   and   you tell everyone, hey. Unidad  

[00:43:31] ODELL:

Nacional de la Esperanza.   Okay. I see it. 062.   062. Sorry. You can keep talking. I'm I'm doing things. It's,  

[00:43:39] Carlos Toriello:

the idea is   there's a lot of people that care deeply about elections and especially young people who aren't allowed to vote.   If we reach them with this, we can gamify   all of that energy   and expose people to their 1st Bitcoin lightning transaction.   Because all you're saying is, hey, let's let's compete with your friends and see who can do more for democracy. Oh, try putting one that's wrong, by the way,  

[00:44:03] ODELL:

because you should don't trust verify. Oh, yeah. That was gonna be my next okay.   Because you're gonna run out. There you go. It's 6 exec the devil's vote. 666.   Oh,  

[00:44:14] Carlos Toriello:

they caught me. Oh, they took 4 sats for me? But you can dispute it if you think the devil was speaking to you in that one.   And so   it also you know, Stackwork is amazing in that they learn I'm disputing it. There you go.   And so we could also learn from our users and adapt. Right? But it basically do you have, like are users doing double work so that There's a lot of things going on in the background. Make sure there's no trolls that are, like, coming in and ruining the process. So if you if you click the home screen up on the left. Okay.   The reason you were able to do that, you've completed 7, you still have 3. Everyone gets 10 Okay. Because that's the test. 10 per day? We just no. We the the first time a user logs in, the first 10 jobs are control jobs. And so if Okay. So you already know the answers. We already know the answers to these. You need to maintain that It's a filter. You need to maintain an 80%,  

[00:45:07] ODELL:

control I'm passing. So far.  

[00:45:10] Carlos Toriello:

But we only did 80% because we didn't know how many people would sign up. If we wanna turn this up to 99%, like, there's a bunch of things that can be done. But then what happens if I fuck around after I get past this process?   We'll eventually catch you because we'll randomly   include. And so there's there's a bunch of really awesome,   stuff. Am I pressing this? Yep. Press that, like, really obvious green button and then look at your paste invoice. Oh, that's wonderful. And so we never told anyone To get my stats.   Anything. You know, when we ran this and and my suggestion is you ever if you wanna do this, you don't say anything about Bitcoin ever. I'm going back to the live chat. Because if if you're like doing Bitcoin in elections, like, this is gonna you're gonna draw out all sorts of wrong attention.  



[00:45:53] ODELL:

And so Yeah. It's hard to Rob okay in the live chat. Not sure I trust Odell to validate elections the way this is going.  

[00:46:03] Carlos Toriello:

Well,   you don't need to trust them. You could just run this yourself. Right? And so, but the the last green button was just to just get paid. So if you wanna try to generate the invoice to see that whether or not we're we're true, but we never said anything about Bitcoin. And then our 1,000 Like a 10 sat invoice.   I believe you. And so,   basically, the idea is,   gamify it. People get excited. They start competing   and all of a sudden they start asking, what does this SAP mean? What does invoice mean? Right. And just randomly people figured it out on social media, on our on our channels. We we never said anything, and they just figured out how to create a lightning invoice. Get their money.   And so Cool.  

Basically, now what we have is I forgot to tell you this this other website. But, if you go to digital witness dot I o, if if you can,   we have a little   arcade screen. So this is a game. This is, an arcade.  

[00:46:59] ODELL:

And so not up yet. Digital   Witness   dot io.  

[00:47:06] Carlos Toriello:

It'll redirect you, so it'll probably say. And now I gotta And so what we're using is every 4 years when Guatemala, if you click on on on the logo up button. They they can't see anything yet. I'm  

[00:47:18] ODELL:

I'm I'm going to it.   Someone else in the comments was like,   these producers need to get fired. They know I'm the only producer here.   Okay.  

[00:47:30] Carlos Toriello:

So,   if you go up,   and then click on the logo up on the left.  

[00:47:36] ODELL:

Okay.  

[00:47:37] Carlos Toriello:

And so there's this arcade. So   the whole thing is I've turned the election auditing and and here's my audit. So I did actually There's, like, someone who did OCR and got 383,000  

[00:47:47] ODELL:

sets? Exactly. That's legit. That's money. That's money.   And so Right now, Freaks, that's like,   that's that's almost   $240 for about $2.50.  

[00:47:57] Carlos Toriello:

Yeah. Which is, like, 3 times the, like, you know. You get to feel good while you do it. Exactly. And so,   I actually did do the audit, and it's this massive thing that goes It's got a huge bind in front of me   right now. It's, it's just, you know, way too much work, you know, to to prove to the other users that I didn't actually, like, do this for just shits and giggles. But now, 4 years from now, when the next election happens in Guatemala,   I will put this on a billboard somewhere so that people recall   how much you got paid. So it's basically turning That $240  

[00:48:27] ODELL:

is gonna be worth a lot more. That 383,000  

[00:48:29] Carlos Toriello:

sats is gonna be worth a lot My my my idea is we can turn elections   into the 10,000 beat, pizza moment. 1010,000 Bitcoin pizza moment. Shit, dude. For There's levels to this. Yes.   And so from here on out,   every time Guatemala has elections, they will be reminded about what the price of Bitcoin was in 2023.   And so yeah, man. It's, I I think that democracy and elections   can be an engine for more Bitcoiners.   I dislike the idea that   autocracies   and dictatorships   have a natural advantage to adopting Bitcoin. Right.   And that democracies   are just gonna, you know, get it late. I I don't think that we should we should, take that stance.  

And it's not because I'd like democracy. It's because I think democracy gives us this opportunity   to create more Bitcoins faster than the dictatorships.  

[00:49:25] ODELL:

Right.   I mean, you think that? You think, like, the dictatorships adopt Bitcoin quicker?  

[00:49:32] Carlos Toriello:

I don't know what you think, but I've I've seen this growing perception that,   you know, if you live in Russia or,   Ukraine,   China, North Korea right now, Cuba, obviously, like, you need like,  

[00:49:45] ODELL:

there's Oh, the people living under there adopt it quicker? Because there's just a much greater need, and, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. So Yeah. Like, if you're getting oppressed if you're getting oppressed, you're gonna look for freedom alternatives. And That's what it is. Like, if you're comfortable, like, you just you just  

[00:50:01] Carlos Toriello:

you just sit tight. Exactly. It's not in your comfort. But I I that you touch the stove. I don't think that's true. I think democracies   have this thing, this consensus that happens on that during every election, and it's increasingly a shit show. And it allows us to reach normies with a different message,  

[00:50:17] ODELL:

and just get give them a a new touch point. Carlos, this is awesome. We're about 50 minutes in. Yep.   By the way, Freaks,   I know most of you listen on the podcast apps. Dispatch is obviously available on every podcast app. You just search solo dispatch. I mean, if you're listening to this, you probably already figured that out.   Obviously, this one had more   visual,   cues to it.   You can search dispatch   on YouTube to see it there. I also post a full video,   on Noster.   And all those links,   as always, every link you need is always at dispatch.com.   So if you do wanna, like, go back and and watch the video I think the video probably adds a lot,   for this rip. But, Carlos,   I wanna talk about America now. Let's do it. We talked about Guatemala. You've done great work there.  

Little bit of a smaller problem to solve. I know it's a problem that's closer to home for you,   but it's a it's a smaller problem to solve,   just from sheer magnitude.   Right? I mean, the population in the United States is, like, 350,000,000   people.   Digital Witness in America,   what do you wanna see happen? I mean, the election the next election next presidential election   is in,   like, 8 months or something like that.   Less than 8 months. And, like, 6 months, it's not gonna be used in this next month. Well,  

[00:51:41] Carlos Toriello:

so I would I would say you're incorrect, Matt. Wow. He's just like, you should see the look he just gave me.   So let's, just cover our bases here. There are 50 states in the federation that still is the United States of America.   Each one of those 50 states has its own election law.   And the beautiful thing about the election system in the United States is that it is decentralized.   Inside of those 50 states, more often than not, there may be exceptions to this, but my understanding   is the election authority   responsible   for implementing the election   is the county clerk.  



[00:52:20] ODELL:

Okay. And so I love having Guatemalan tell me how my election's wrong.  

[00:52:25] Carlos Toriello:

And so I have no way I I don't know if you're right or not. I I believe you, Carla. I've been talking to a lot of people around I imagine you have been. The United States that have confirmed this and haven't found anyone to tell me where I'm wrong with And so So even with presidential elections, the county clerk is in charge of the county. Okay. Exactly. And so the That's cool. Your your local government   is where you vote. That means that it it's and this is, you know, part of why I'm I'm drawing attention to the Guatemalan, you know, voting system is that's I think the ideal.   Everyone should be lucky enough to live in a democracy that has a voting system like Guatemala.  

That is not the case. But of the 3,000 plus counties in the United States Right. You're on a gradient.   Your county   may   provide you the privilege that Guatemalans have access to, you know, primary source documents, but you may live in a county that doesn't. And so my message to be 3,000? Is that what it is? Over 3,000 counties. Yeah. Okay. Over 3,000. But under 4,000?   Under 4,000. Okay. And, It's in the threes. Well, the thing is there's also, like, 7,000,   ish   taxable jurisdictions, and so there's it's unclear to me whether or not it's actually 7,000 different election systems. But there's   at least over 3,000 county clerks. Got it. And I would say   you was you were saying, oh, it's a bigger problem, actually, buddy.  

Buddy. Yeah. I'm your buddy, pal. I of those 3,000 counties, I would challenge you to say there's probably not that many that have more registered voters than the Guatemalan,   state does. Okay. That's interesting. So our single authority oversees 9,000,000 votes.   Your   3,000 authorities   oversee   less than But you have 25,000   tables, and we have essentially 3,000 tables. Right? Well, actually, you'd have 3,000, you know, voting districts and however many voting tables inside those Inside the district. Exactly.   So my point is   the the people in the hot seat come November   are those county clerks. Okay. And so   you were saying it's gonna be harder. Actually, no.  

The fact that this this what I just described I will say I appreciate your   optimism. The the the the time stamping service that that we provided the election authorities in Guatemala   is essentially cover your ass insurance for election authorities.   And we proved that in Guatemala, not only can you get election authorities to buy it, but   they were accused of election fraud. Right. And that's where this little, you know, card that I'm leaving here and for folks that want to, you I invite you to watch a 16 minute documentary   called immutable  

[00:55:03] ODELL:

How many minutes? 16.   16. Should we play it? No. We're not gonna play it. That's ridiculous.   So, like, 10% of the episode is just like the documentary. Okay. But what is this website? What is the website? It's film.simpleproof.com.   Filmdot simpleproof.com.   Or immutable democracy on YouTube.  

[00:55:22] Carlos Toriello:

Okay. It's free. Okay. Perfect. And so in 16 minutes, we'll show you how it happened in Guatemala, and they were accused of election tampering. Does it work well audio only or no?  

[00:55:32] ODELL:

No. Okay. Yeah. I'm so not gonna put it at the end. I will not put it at the end of the episode, freaks. And just go search immutable democracy   on YouTube after you finish this episode. And so,  

[00:55:44] Carlos Toriello:

the election authorities in Guatemala were accused of election tampering.   And it's   the work that Simple Proof did by using Bitcoin as their witness Right. To   is giving them the proof that they need that no election tampering happened. Right. And so you are literally in Guatemala have the situation where an election authority   is facing accusations   from the justice department of election tampering Right. And being able to credibly make the case that that is   not true   because of Bitcoin. So Right. Bitcoin in the first time that it was used by a country  

[00:56:18] ODELL:

thank you. Yeah. The first time One of the freaks put the link in the comments. Thank you, Bitcoin and Cloud. Continue.  

[00:56:24] Carlos Toriello:

And so, the first time that Bitcoin was used to protect a national voting system was the first time that the national voting authorities used Bitcoin to protect themselves from a justice department accusing them of election tampering. And so Cool. It's very useful, and and election authorities So you're saying they have an incentive?  

[00:56:42] ODELL:

I mean, whoever wins wants  

[00:56:45] Carlos Toriello:

whoever wins wants to be able to prove that that it's legit. Right? Well, more than that, it's the election authority. You're a local county clerk, which might already be a Bitcoiner and might not know about this story.   He's in the hot seat, and come November, he might get accused of election tampering.  

[00:57:01] ODELL:

Because he's the one that can tamper the JPEG. Exactly. He's the one that goes to jail if election tampering is proven. Right. So I don't know.   So he's the one to convince.  

[00:57:11] Carlos Toriello:

Exactly. So if your freaks wanna do this, my my message to them is it's actually just 3,000 of these people have to make this decision.  

[00:57:19] ODELL:

And we're not saying And even if you get, like, 200, 300, it's net net benefit. Dude, I'm looking for 1. Yeah. Like, I got 3,000 of that. I turn to the optimistic one. Right?   You're you're just like, okay. We'll get one person. If we just get one county in the 3,000 Have you talked to the Nashville County Clerk? Davidson County? I just got here on Thursday, and I'm leaving tomorrow. So I have not had a chance, but I was speaking to some folks here. Did you talk to Rod about it? I I've I've I'm pointing to Rod. He's in the other room. I that's the plan. I was talking to some other folks up there. Rod's big in the poll local politics. There there are some folks that are getting excited about this. Personally, I'm disenfranchised. Like, I don't, This is not about politics. Freedom Text fixes this, not democracy. But This is not about democracy. I still like it. I think it's an improvement.   This is about, hey, what I want Like, Rod's like a big wine Rod,   wine and diner kinda.  



[00:58:08] Carlos Toriello:

Well, it's it's Politician guy. My message is if we can get even one county in the United States to do this Then he probably plays golf with the county clerk. Like, you should that's what I'm saying. I'm I'm I'm going to talk to him. To be clear. I mean, he said he wasn't in town, and I'm glad he's back.   If we even had just won, we can credibly make the case as of November of this year that Bitcoin protects democracy in the United States of America. Right. And all of a sudden, when, you know, people are making the argument that we should turn off the miners because they're doing useless, you know, mathematical formulas, Well, we can call a few county clerks and have them share their story   about how Bitcoin enabled them to create an anchor of truth in a sea of lies.  

Right. And that's the point. It's if you're it I'm not asking you to care about the elections come November. I'm asking you to see it as an opportunity   to get Bitcoin   to   protect   this thing that people care about. Right. And therefore, they'll have a different touch point with it, and potentially, it'll be easier to orange pill your neighbors because maybe some of them care about Bitcoin   care about their elections. And by doing this, you're gonna actually help someone out.   These election authorities are usually well meaning, you know, normies, precoiners that just haven't gotten hit by the the fiat apocalypse yet, but it's coming for them. And they may end up going to jail come November if if they're on the wrong, you know, place when when the tornado of of clown world comes to pick them up.   So, it is very simple to integrate.  

And of course, if you wanna go all in and do an audit and use it as a means of   exposing normies to their 1st lightning transaction,   obviously, reach out to me. I'm I'm very passionate about that. But just the the easy wind here is   if Bitcoin protects   small local elections,   then we've just,   proved a use case   that can't be removed. And I can tell you from my experience,   the the winners of the Guatemalan election who were, you know, they tried to repeat the election. Now I can talk to the executive branch of the Guatemalan government and tell them Bitcoin helped you. Right. And they know it. Like, they can't take it back.   Bitcoin did that for them. And so when I'm sitting down with a a government bureaucrat in in Guatemala to tell them to not do some stupid law.  

Like, they they have something   that they know is real. And if they get a call from someone to say, oh, you, you know, have to abolish Bitcoin,   they're gonna have to, you know, reconcile that internally.  

[01:00:43] ODELL:

To me, this is win win because I love Bitcoin,   and I don't trust our election process.   So if I could trust it a little bit more like, it's a very low bar. Yeah. Like, the bar is is quite low.   We have someone in the comments asking what block explorer I show on screen. It's it's mempool.space.   Yeah. To me, this is win win. But, I mean, when I say it's a bigger hurdle   is,   like, god. I wish we had   paper ballots   and JPEGs.   Right now, what we have is closed source   digital voting machines   with, like, 0 fucking audit trail from the time you press the fucking touchscreen. No. You don't. That's incorrect.  

[01:01:27] Carlos Toriello:

Some counties have that. Some counties have that. Got it. Not all of them. Right. And so that's the other point about this is there are some legit, like, decent elections in this country   and some county clerks that are very passionate about what they've done. But New York gets a lot of shit deservingly,  

[01:01:44] ODELL:

but I will say my time in New York, it was always paper ballots. Paper ballots only.  

[01:01:49] Carlos Toriello:

And I just heard I I was talking to some folks that did some work in Missouri,  

[01:01:53] ODELL:

and and I believe And the freaks in America, you'll remember the hanging chads of  

[01:01:59] Carlos Toriello:

Florida. Florida. Yeah. There there's there's a lot of places that do offer you access to the primary source data, and you'd be surprised.   My invitation to Bitcoin is listening to this is let's   unless you've got too much going on. Right? Like if you're already building a bunch of stuff, but if you're a Bitcoiner that's kind of just, you know,   not doing much,   then just I invite you to go and knock on your county clerk's door   and ask them, hey,   Can I get access to the data and audit the election? Like, is that even possible here?   And at worst, you'll find out that you do live in a county like the one you described where the it's a don't verify trust Yeah. System.  



[01:02:37] ODELL:

But I'd say I'd Well, I've never voted in Nashville. Well, just to be clear,  

[01:02:43] Carlos Toriello:

well, knowing   if your county is that   is useful. Just just answering for yourself whether or not   your county is a don't verify trust county   will give you a sense Get it's it's actionable information. It's intelligence   about the county clerk and the people there,   and responsible for your records because the county clerks are the ones that run the records locally.   And so just knowing if your county   doesn't believe and don't trust verify  

[01:03:12] ODELL:

is useful. Maybe you should consider moving to a a county that does have a a don't trust verify philosophy, and there are those counties. And my point is Yeah. But for the presidential election, you still have to go by the other counties too. Well, that's my point. It's like, who cares about the president? This whole electoral college system. So, like, it really it really matters what is the majority of counties in your state are doing.   But you're falling into the trap of thinking that that's why this matters. Like, it doesn't. No. I this is what I love about you is that you're just solving the problems you can solve. You're not trying to solve everything. So it's like all these little, like, but, what, this, and but if. It's like, yeah. We're not solving that problem What would for you. What we're doing is those counties that have a don't trust But as an American, this is important for like, because I don't I try and stay out of politics, but, like, it if it comes up, like, it's important for me to make it clear how disenfranchised I am with the current state of things. Like, the audience should be aware of this.   And, like, the other piece too is is   and I know this has become political. Oh, by the way, to the freak,   JPEG.  

I reloaded   I have to reload the live,   I have to   You've said you've never seen that graphic on mempool.space   before. I I believe it's mempool.space/clock.   Oh. And and, yes, Wiz did, for dispatch. Mhmm. So   shout out shout out, Wiz.   And that was I needed something that was,   that worked with the live chat because live chat freaks.   You guys are the rider dies, and I appreciate you. So it was important.   But, anyway,   mail in voting   has become   a somehow,   partisan issue.   And it probably will just flip which party is upset about. Probably whoever loses   will always be upset with mail in voting.  

Mail in voting is a problem. Like, that is not okay. I'm not cool with it. I'm kinda curious on your opinion.   But to me,   the whole idea of in person secret ballots   are   are are incredibly important   to the integrity of an election.   And the reason is because your boss or your spouse or someone else   can coerce you, can force you to vote,   or can buy your vote   by   by standing over your shoulder while you mail in the ballot. And this is why   blockchain voting doesn't work.   This is why digital app based voting doesn't work. It's all the same problem. The same problem is if the person who is buying your vote or forcing your vote can verify which way you voted,   then the integrity of the election is comp is compromised. Now I will say there is a middle ground   where you can do, like, a mail in remote voting kind of situation   where they can verifiably   override their vote in person later. So, like, you have   the coercer.  

You have,   your boss, your spouse. Those are the two main ones. Right? And there's obviously other ones.   I think someone got in trouble because they tried to sell their vote on eBay at one point.   But, like, your boss or your spouse, like, they they look over your your shoulder while you're on the app or you're mailing in your vote, and they've they force you to vote a certain way. And then   but they they can't   they they have no idea that come election day, you actually go down and you you change your vote.   That kind of solves a lot of the problems, and it's kind of a it's an interesting middle ground there.  



[01:06:55] Carlos Toriello:

But it's something for people to keep in mind. Did does Guatemala have mail in voting? No. Yeah. And we also when you show up and we give you the ballot, we paint your finger with in the office. It's   the cheapest double spendable   world. Democracies, but it fucking works. It's this Like, does your finger have ink on it? You can't vote. Exactly. So the best you can do is, like, change your voting jurisdiction, but you can't   million. Right? And so, in terms of getting into Ink finger is like a   it's it's clever. It's, you know, Satoshi   is in the real world, man.  



[01:07:27] ODELL:

So in terms of, like, the rabbit hole of voting, etcetera, like, I Close source digital voting machines too, man. Goddamn it. And they're publicly traded too. It's like   your your favorite closed source voting machine that you can audit is also, like, pays dividends.   Yes. Legit pays dividends. It's insane.  

[01:07:45] Carlos Toriello:

I I but, see, in terms of my why how this solves that portion, Matt, is you were earlier, you were mentioning, oh, we're we we have this close source system that's but that's not true. It's like there's it's   there's this perception, you know. Cloud world has taken us to a point where, you know, you just assume that everything's fucked. Right. And that's just not true. There are places   where people have their citadels, and they're trying to fight back. Right. What I'm saying is if we can empower those   counties   to resist,   then we're reaching we're we're we're   giving them the proper weaponry,   you know, digital encrypted   tools that were used, you know, used to be considered   weapons,   we're giving them those counties the tools they need to withstand this storm. And so instead of just having the the the slow creep of this nonsense continue,   then it's reach out to your local guy and and help them because he'll if you if you imagine, like, Gandalf, like, putting the staff down and and and and stopping the Balrog. Like, you shall not pass. Freaks. He's doing the he's it looks kinda looks like he's jerking off, but he's doing the staff movement. Yeah. It's it's it's, at the very least, if you are I think weapons is a little bit provocative. What about shields? Yeah. Shields. This is this is a unstoppable. Defensive. It's it's a defensive tool. Exactly. It's it's it's making sure that the slow creep of this nonsense that is just taking over more and more places   stops.  

And, you know, it's gonna be harder to flip the places that are are already on the other side.   But I think that if we've,   empower and strengthen those places that are still solid,   it'll be easier to continue to make the case that these places are the better place   to live. I don't know what drove you to move to Nashville, but, like, you I gotta think that this is where you're making your stand. Right? And so it's it's there are people that aren't for now. Yeah. There aren't there's some people here that haven't gotten the message yet with Bitcoin, but this is a different way to do that. To get them to understand this will protect you from the insanity   that will come for this place. Come November,   it's it's   it's a crapshoot. Ridiculous. It's a crapshoot, man. Are you is your county gonna be the county that just decides  

[01:10:01] ODELL:

something that is gonna be so valuable that whoever loses is gonna say the election was fake Exactly. No matter what. Like, I if I could bet on that, if anyone would take odds on that, I would just bet all the whole house on it Exactly. No matter what. But so there's gonna be so many counties that are gonna have to defend themselves against insanity,  

[01:10:20] Carlos Toriello:

And   they won't forget   when you showed up and gave them the tool that protected them.   And it'll just make it easier to orange peel your your neighbors and your friends and and the guy that handles your your archives locally. You know, the county clerk is responsible for a lot of archives and that's the other option. The cool thing about this is you start with the election system, but then you can move into the rest of the archives that are, gathered locally. And so I wanna live in a world. I wanna raise my kids in a world where   if at any point   you are sued by the state, the state has to provide evidence with timestamps   that you can trustlessly or trust minimized,   in a trust minimized way verify for yourself. I do not wanna live in a world where when I'm sued by the state and the state is arguing that I committed election fraud and I'm a treasonous, you know, my fuck that should be disappeared. Yeah. I wanna be able to to say, well, show me the time stamps.  

And so I think this is is one way that we can get closer to that world,   before it all goes to hell.  

[01:11:21] ODELL:

Fuck. Yeah. Well, I got your back, Carlos.   Pride or die. I I would love to see more integrity in elections. And I would say to your point of, like, why did my family move to Nashville? It's like,   in America specifically,   I mean, the core one of the core foundational   defense mechanisms we have is is free movement between the states and competition between the states.   And, yes, it's always difficult to move,   but I Americans,   we specifically have this privilege that it's much easier for us to move between,   competing jurisdictions   than for most of the rest of the world.  

And the very least you can do is is move to a place where   you think it's a little bit better for your family, and and and that's why we love New York. You know? And if people go back,   I guess rabbit hole recap now is gonna be going for 5 and a half years every week. Every fucking week.   They need to take a break eventually. We're gonna take a break, guys.   Still dispatch has been going for, like, 3 years now.   And I was publicly a a a New York maximum. I was a New York maximumist before I was a Bitcoin maximalist. New York's the best state.   And I I stayed humble, and I put my pride away, and I I moved the family. We we moved together, and,   that was part of the reason. Part of the reason was,   you know,   at at the end of the day, what what do humans have,   to fight,   those in power? Right? And and the number one thing you have is your feet. Right? And and move somewhere where you where you think you're getting a better shake. For sure.  



[01:13:06] Carlos Toriello:

Wouldn't it be more attractive to find a jurisdiction where all of the public records are time stamped to Bitcoin?   Yeah. Obviously. A 100%. Hell, yeah. And so   I just wanna see some JPEGs, but  

[01:13:20] ODELL:

I honestly, I   I might be wrong. You seem to know more about the US election system than I do, but I have never seen, like, JPEG tallies. Not not even   hash   time stamped into Bitcoin blockchain Just the j JPEGs. I have never even seen a JPEG tell I'm sure they probably exist somewhere Well on some random dot gov site. Well, they then that's my other message is that there's a the the election integrity, like, movement or whatever,   there are some folks that have been fighting to get open source into the election system. Yeah. I mean, what if you have a digital voting machine, first of all, it should be, at the very least, source viewable. I'm not even I don't wanna get into a license debate. I'm not saying that the machine has to be false.   Like, I should be able to verify the source.  

And then second of all, it should print a fucking paper receipt, and you should manually take the paper receipt out. This is so simple shit. It's like the ink on the finger.   Take the paper receipt,   and then there's a box next to the machine. You should take the paper receipt, put it in the box next to the machine. If you question the machine, you check the paper receipts in the in the box. And as Super simple. As it's going in the box, it should be scanned.   Yeah. Well, I mean, it doesn't even have to be. Well, that's this is just have a box of paper receipts that we can have, like, a warring tribe of 10 people  

[01:14:40] Carlos Toriello:

all look at the paper receipts after the fact if we think the machine has fucked around with us. We don't most of the counties don't have that. Well, you've just described the gold standard of what, you know, proper elections are supposed to be like. And it's not a disputed gold standard. It's just that the nerds think that and there's a group of nerds that have been fighting for this for decades. And guess what? They are losing.   They've been losing. And so another point here is we need to bring that group of people that from that false, you know, group   to realize Bitcoin is your friend.  

Yeah. If you have found, if you've been able to work with a county somewhere   that is doing what you described and there are there's, like, not all of the counties are are crap. Right? There are some good people trying to it's not rocket science. This is not building a a a rocket ship. It's super simple. It's very simple. You put ink on the finger. You have paper receipts. Like, that's all I need. And and then you I'm a simple guy. And and and when the when the at the end of the day, you dump all the receipt, and in front of everyone, you do the count, and then you write it down. Shit. You put it in the blockchain. Boom. Boom. Boom. Like   so there's plenty of people solved it. There's plenty of people that do this. And what this my message is, let's those people need your help, and they will,   you know, they will   appreciate the help. And if we can call more attention to those counties,   I think  

[01:16:07] ODELL:

places like Nashville or or other places I don't know. I'm not vouching for Davidson County, Nashville's County. Well Like I said, I have not voted here. Well, it's it now that you have voted with your feet here, maybe you can start demanding better services from your local government. Yeah. I mean, Carlos, this is why you visited. You know? Like, just look me in the eye and, like, make me do things.   Carlos, this has been great.   I guess let me say my piece real quick.   Freaks, thank you for joining us in the live chat.   The Freaks that joined us in the live chat, Zap stats directly in the live chat. Like, you guys are the ride or dies. It's amazing having you. You guys make the show unique. There's nothing like it. I don't think,   we're a completely unmoderated live chat. You guys are, like, part of the hosts.  

Also, we obviously have no ads. We have no sponsors,   and,   we   dispatch just relies on on donations directly from the audience. This is a concept called value for value. It's very early days, but, you guys are the trailblazers here. So I do appreciate you guys supporting the show.   Our top   4 supporters   this week was 8 Myth Rander with 48,000 stats, Gary Krause with 20,000 stats, t dub with 10,000 stats, and user t3ccapt   with 10,000 stats.   Thank you, Freaks, for supporting the show. I know sats are scarce.   Maybe you should consider verifying a local election, and you can start earning sats. But if you don't have stats to spare,   share the share the show with friends and family. We're in every podcast app. Just search dispatch. All the links are at dispatch.com.  

Leave a review. All these things do help. Carlos,   this has been fucking awesome.   Do you have any final thoughts, for audience?  

[01:17:58] Carlos Toriello:

Don't give up on your neighbor.   We need a lot of people in the citadels.   And if they weren't   ready to grok Bitcoin because of some money, maybe truth and integrity is the way to go.   And just   see elections as an opportunity to farm more Bitcoiners,   or at the very least, get the word out about the fact that we don't all need to live in a sea of lies.   We some of us choose to have an anchor of truth,   and I think that's   useful. It it at the very least helped me not lose my mind in our elections which were garbage and nonsense. And and now I have an end to some of the folks that,   are making decisions that actually do affect me, and they can't ignore the fact that Bitcoin helped them. So, just check it out. Immutable democracy,  

[01:18:52] ODELL:

reach out on on Noster. I'm more than happy to help anyone that wants to try to take a crack at it. Yeah. So he's digital witness on Noster. You should use Noster. I mean, if you're listening to the show, I'm, like, broken record on that.   Carlos. Oh, and, also, immutable   democracy   search on YouTube. Watch the video. 16 minutes. Carlos, thank you for visiting Nashville. Always a pleasure. It's it's   I really enjoyed this rep. I hope the freaks enjoyed it.   I'm proud to call you a friend. Thank you for all you do.   My pleasure, man. It's an honor.  

Let's fucking go. And, Phreaks, tomorrow, we have another dispatch   at 1500   UTC. So that's 2 hours you   2 hours earlier than usual with Kieran of ZapStream.   We'll talk to him all about why your Zaps aren't showing up.   And then the day after that, because   can't stop, won't stop, we have,   1700 UTC. We have Ben Arc of Ellen Bits, so that'll be fun. Thank you, Carlos. Thank you, Freaks. Appreciate it.   The chance.   I'd love to collapse with you and ease you against this song.   I think   A heart doesn't play by rules, and love has its own demand.   But I'll be there to take care of you if ever you should decide.  

To you.   Love you, freaks.   That was that track was,   will do by TV on the radio,   and, I'll see you all tomorrow. Stay humble, sex hats.   Peace.