Will blockchain make elections more secure?

Are you concerned about your votes? Do you also feel like having a more secure voting system? Are you looking forward to the implementation of Blockchain Technology in the voting system? Well, if you agree to all the questions mentioned, let’s dive into a discussion to know its probability.

“A ballot is more powerful than a bullet.” — Abraham Lincoln.

Voting is a critical component of any group effort, with methods ranging from a show of hands to the use of a ballot box, as well as online voting and liquid democracy platforms. However, some issues plague online voting and e-democracy platforms, undermining the process’s definite nature and certainty :

1. Who is in charge of the internet platform?

2. How can I be sure the votes are appropriately counted?

3. Who is responsible for ensuring the system’s availability throughout the election?

4. How can votes be confirmed once they have been cast?

Will blockchain make elections more secure?

These critical aspects are managed at a significant cost in the context of public elections: just consider the various figures involved in the control and calculation of votes (counting managers, polling station managers, law enforcement personnel), as well as the characteristics of the equipment used (voting cards, stamps, special pencils).

NEED FOR BLOCKCHAIN-BASED VOTING SYSTEM

The Delhi-headquartered Election Commission of India has almost 300 employees who ensure free and fair elections in all States/Union Territories. Moreover, there are over 11 million officials from schools, colleges, and parliamentary officers on duty during the elections to keep a check on it. Despite these, there are arguments and cases on the transparency of the voting process.

According to Indian Express,

“22 opposition leaders met in 2019 and demanded a 100% of VVPAT check in case of mismatch. The Opposition leaders also requested that the verification of VVPAT slips of five randomly identified polling stations per Assembly constituency should be done before the counting of votes and not after the completion of the last round.”

Once, the EC told Madras High Court that EVMs cannot be fudged with Wi-Fi, electronic devices. There are possibly two main reasons why we can prefer a blockchain-based voting system over the ballot or EVMs, which are as follows:

1. BLOCKCHAIN BRINGS TRANSPARENCY TO THE ELECTIONS

Free and fair elections are the building blocks of any democratic nation and building a robust voting process is a necessity. There have been long-debated election distrust issues in democracies like India & US and the apt solution to it could be polling, counting, and result announcements using a decentralized platform. Let’s dig deeper into the solution:

• Tamper Proof: Blockchain will make sure that no one can intervene in the electoral roll. When we use Blockchain-powered voting devices, the voters can come and enter their biometric details, and a hash key will be generated for each of them to log in and vote.
• Non-Fudging of Data: Anyone altering the data will be caught easily using ledger technology-led tracing.
• Transparency of Data: Data will be secure and visible to the stakeholders and can be assessed at any time.
• Proof of Stake: Proof of stake including outsourced protocols could do wonders in the supervision of EC. Proof of work might be influenced by nominated candidates as Indian Elections witness money and muscle power too.
• Private or public Blockchain: Private blockchain could help the election commission to maintain polling data secrecy as Indian elections happen under the supervision of EC.

2. BLOCKCHAIN-AUTHENTIC INDEPENDENT ELECTIONS SCRUTINY

With the advent of advanced election technology, the new possibilities for independent auditors to inspect the election results in real-time are increased. The booth-wise input transmission can be easily analyzed by any unbiased monitoring official with apt technical knowledge. These officials are capable of detecting any changes to voter file data as well as confirming and certifying individual votes.

Well, the technology is neither too difficult nor too easy to learn. Just a little support from the election authorities & technical experts and the election monitoring groups are ready to utilize the democratized technology to offer a free and fair election process. An EC could even revise its model code of conduct and integrate the blockchain technology by collaborating with private players.

IMPLEMENTATION AND PROPOSALS

• Swiss blockchain-based voting system: Agora is a Swiss Lab & Foundation offering digital decentralized voting systems based on blockchain technology. It recorded the first government election on blockchain as an accredited observer in Sierra Leone on March 7, 2018.

Agora Bulletin Board

Agora, officially accredited as an international observer, recorded Sierra Leone West District results on its custom-built blockchain, ensuring that election data was third-party verifiable and protected against any possibility of tampering. Election results are publicly available on Agora’s website, which has allowed citizens to monitor their election within only a few hours of polls closing.

• MIT Model: As per a recent report of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a possible model-a straw man proposal for blockchain as a ballot box:

“The voting authority, which maintains a voter registry, has each registered user create a public/private key pair, and each user sends their public key to the registry. Then, the voter registry spends one coin on each public key. To vote, each user spends their coin on the candidate of their choice. After a period, everyone can look at the blockchain, total up each candidate’s coins, and select the one with the most coins as the winner.”

Although this may not be an ideal situation, it might help understand blockchain-based voting to some extent.

• IIT, Madras Proposal: The Election Commission of India is doing a blockchain project with IIT-Madras and some eminent scientists. Just as Sunil Arora(the former Chief Election Commissioner)said,

“We are doing a project with IIT-Madras, Chennai, and some eminent scientists. We are doing a blockchain project. We are very hopeful by the 2024 Lok Sabha elections you will see a lot of fundamental differences in the way we (Election Commission) is working, including this (e-voting).”

Further adding, he reported that the project will enable app-based e-voting to make the process more convenient during the world’s biggest elections.

PROBLEMS OF THE SYSTEM

A study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) says, “While current election systems are far from perfect, security risks can persist in Internet and Blockchain-based voting systems.” In the paper titled “Going from Bad to Worse: From Internet voting to Blockchain Voting”, the increase in the risk of undetectable, nation-scale election failures in Internet and Blockchain-based voting systems is clearly mentioned.

The Institute Professor Ronald Rivest of MIT’s renowned Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and his colleagues analysed prior research on the same and showed that :

“Not only do these risks persist in blockchain-based voting systems, but blockchains may introduce additional problems for voting systems. More importantly: given the state of computer security, any turnout increase derived from the Internet or Blockchain-based voting would come at the cost of losing meaningful assurance that votes have been counted as they were cast, and not undetectably altered or discarded. This state of affairs will continue as long as standard tactics such as malware, zero-days and denial of service attacks continue to be effective.”

For Developing countries such systems to work efficiently, voters need: smartphones/computers, up-to-date software to ensure minimal security loopholes & secure, fast and reliable internet connectivity.

1. Online voting systems are quite prone to hacking attempts just like the infamous Voatz(a blockchain-based voting app used in a US state in 2018 for overseas military voters that were found to harbour serious security vulnerabilities).
2. Online voting turns out to be vindicated. For example, trial runs in Belgium and Estonia showed negligible increases or increases significantly favouring high-income neighbourhoods. According to the experts, the system is still not hacker-proof, and the benefits aren’t worth the risks.
3. The main concern also includes the regulatory grey area in which the Blockchain-based systems operate. Like in India, there are rumours about an all-out crypto ban. Moreover, privacy continues to be governed by a hotch-potch of arcane statues even as the much-delayed Personal Data Protection Bill is still delayed.

CONCLUSION

• All in all, blockchain-based e-voting is still in its budding stages. One may expect more localised trial runs in the near term.
• A state-wide or national election held primarily on the digital ledger seems impractical, hasty and dangerously reckless as of today, especially in India.
• Traditional offline voting procedures are unlikely to be completely replaced by blockchain-based ones but can be successfully used alongside them.
• To securely store voting data, authenticate valid voters, and cast actual ballots, you can construct a blockchain-based e-voting system.
• Although blockchains appear to have various benefits, they may create new issues like new attack vectors.