Electoral Voting via Blockchain
Premise: An individual’s fingerprint and retinal scans are unique. The current proposition is to use these two additional checkpoints along with traditional voter registration logs to ensure a unique vote.
One of the hottest topics in the political arena in the West is “Election Rigging”. While the intensity of noise this time around is loud, it isn’t necessarily the first time such a mishap has occurred. A quick read on Wikipedia (link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud) delivers a buffet of electoral frauds that occur globally.
Democracy and any form of voting is a great space for distributed ledger to step in and decrease fraud. By no means can there be a guarantee to zero fraud: it goes without saying, and one statement I often repeat… “As long as human input matters, the risk for fraud always remains. Morality is a deeply subjective matter…”
One path forward could be Blockchain be used to implement Unique Digital Identity (“UDI”) to prevent voting mishaps — especially double voting.
- The Users: Primary users of such a system are democratic governments and its citizens. In democracies often double voting take place. As long as a button on a voting machine can be pressed manually, and identity verifications are left to humans (human intervention), voting manipulation will always be a possibility.

A registered voter (named Johnnie Walker) comes to voting booth A. His credentials will be checked against the voter registration list following which his fingerprints and retina are scanned. Each voting center/constituency acts as a node on the blockchains distributed ledger of an ongoing election. Johnnies Walker’s information is then verified against all nodes in the ledger in real time to eliminate duplication (double spending) . Since all the data is in digital format: Name, DOB, Fingerprint and Retinal scan, the moment Johnnie Walker is verified to be a registered unique voter who will be voting for the first time in the current election, he is allowed to go ahead and cast his vote.
- After the vote act: Once he casts his vote, the distributed ledger updates his voting “action”. If Johnnie Walker tries to vote again using a fake ID, at voting booth B, which is also a node, an error of duplication for retinal and fingerprint scan would show. Johnnie Walker could be reported for voting fraud.
- For the first time: Fingerprint and retinal scans can be input at the booth. They needn’t be pre-recorded. Once input, the 3 metrics: Name, DOB & Face Image, Fingerprints and Retinal Scans are a unique ID for Johnnie Walker and are saved into the ledger for life, that can be used in subsequent elections.
- Technology:
(1) Voting booths that include fingerprint scanners, similar to the ones used at Immigrations counters at airports. Retina scanners.
(2) A Blockchain Distributed Ledger System to update votes and eliminate duplication.
(3) Intranet to prevent cyber-attacks and external manipulation.
- Why Blockchain: If you break down the tech specs of this issue, one could argue that there isn’t necessarily the requirement of a distributed ledger. A very secure network, which is centralized, could work just fine. Add to it, energy consumption that nodes use up to verify every data entry (retinal, finger id, name, DOB verification). A way to work around this issues would be to issue Private Key IDs to the user, which is tailored to their credentials. Each time the private key is used/burned it cannot be used again in the ongoing election. The premise of this hope is again the fact that based on 4–5 unique metrics to an individual, one cannot have more than 1 private key.
This would result in certain nodes being used as specific metric ledgers and being accessed to verify at very specific times. Hopefully, reducing the verification requirement from every node.
The biggest advantage of a distributed ledger over a secure system is the threat of a hack: once an extremely secure network has been hacked, every bit of informations inside it thus becomes questionable. Considered corrupt.
Also, if an election procedure is considered under attack, it might result in stoppage of the ongoing exercise. The beauty of blockchain/decentralized processes is the minuteness of ability to change an already entered data in a ledger. Taking over a majority of nodes, to rig an election would be an uphill task… not an impossible one though.
- The Initiative’s Identity:
In a wide scope the system can be implemented to reduce fraudulent multiple identities/double voting. A initiative could be further implemented in financial institutions and other verification agencies. The metrics for an individual could be used to track a person’s tax filings, income sources etc. Since the scale is massive, ideally an IP or a platform for a fee that is used with existing incumbents is the best path forward. Getting reimbursed for using the IP could enable revenue due to scale and ward of immediate threats due to price points.
- Competition: Implementation by other competitors could happen but that would be better for the initiative. Larger the ledger platform, more data could be assimilated and faster the implementation.
CONCERNS:
- Security Breaches could be a cause for concern when the ledger depends on the internet.[1]
- Social influences, such as targeted ads, fake news cannot be eradicated. Technology can reduce error, it cant undo human preferences for believing lies and rumors. Technology unfortunately cannot always stupidity.
Footnotes:
[1] Kuchler, H. (2016, September 12). Cyber attacks raise questions about blockchain security. Retrieved July 10, 2018, from https://www.ft.com/content/05b5efa4-7382-11e6-bf48-b372cdb1043a
Part of my course study at MIT Sloan Blockchain Technologies.
