Blockchain allows protecting the election from fraud
How Blockchain & eVoting enhances democracy
Disclaimer: The information for this article was taken from open sources. This is compilation of previously published materials and adapted them. Am grateful to P. H. Madore for the bulk of the information. Of course, I do not pretend to be 100% authorship.
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“If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.” - Garry Wills
“A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.” - Theodore Roosevelt
Is it possible to make the world better with the help of the Blockchain and other revolutionary technologies? We believe that it will be so. Moreover, the more people find out about these opportunities, the sooner we will be able to use them together.
Electronic voting is an imminent step in the near future. This is what Philip Boucher, who issued a document for the European Parliament in 2006, said in his keynote address that the idea of a revolutionary Blockchain technology capable of introducing transparency, increasing efficiency and real honesty in the electoral process.
At the beginning of the document notes that the concept of eVoting is still in its infancy and there are too many unknowns.
“Now we have a further choice; to continue trusting central authorities to manage elections or to use blockchain technology to distribute an open voting record among citizens.”
And further:
“The debate is whether blockchain will represent a transformative or merely incremental development, and what its implications could be for the future of democracy.”
Philip Boucher notes that in the near future, voting based on the Blockchain makes sense to introduce at the level of private companies. He argues that some political parties have already found use of new technology within their system, and several Estonian companies use Blockchain to count the votes of shareholders. Philip also believes that smart contracts play a role in the upcoming changes will automate many processes.
Further on the text, the document appeals to the skeptics of voting via Blockchain, he noted that most of their criticisms can be attributed to any other kind of remote voting. The only thing that Philip is ready to agree with is that only the Blockchain technology that is beginning to develop can cast doubt on many voters, which will prevent its mass implementation and adoption.
“…In this light, it is not surprising that links are drawn between BEV and transitions towards a more direct, decentralised and bottom-up democracy. As such, the extent to which blockchain technology will flourish in the area of evoting may depend upon the extent to which it can reflect the values and structure of society, politics and democracy.”
The prospects of the introduction of voting based on Blockchain, has always been one of the main tasks in recent years. The possibility of less hindered the voting process will lead to a more representative results. In addition, this technology would be extremely useful in an election where every vote is valuable, for example, has been on the US presidential election, when
candidates for the presidency were George Bush and Al Gore. Almost any problem noted in the documentary “Hacking Democracy” would be eliminated.
The principles of democracy cannot work fully without trust in the purity of the voting process. It is here that the logic of the whole process of democratic elections is getting weaker and weaker from year to year. Here are some examples:
Philippines, April 2016
On the Internet was a complete database of voters: 55 million passports and unique fingerprints. Hackers carried out the action “We are for fair elections” on the eve of the May 9 elections in the Philippines, leaving an anonymous request to strengthen the protection of computers in the counting of votes.
Turkey, April 2016
One of the largest pre-election information leaks: 50 million addresses and personal data of Turkish citizens, including the Prime Minister and the President of the country. In the general access was information about almost every citizen of Turkey: there are 77.6 million of them in the country.
USA, Presidential elections in 2016
Until now, rumors are circulating that the victory of Donald Trump was provided by hackers from Russia. There is an opinion that databases are available to hackers around the world, and it is possible that the organizers and performers of the action can live in Russia, the United States, and somewhere in Serbia (although they could all be run by a single management center).
According to the English writer and urbanist Adam Greenfield, the Blockchain technology in theory could serve as a base for managing anything from protest movement to a state organized on the principles of impartial collective democracy.
The newly developed and actively developing technology of “Distributed Consensus” is described as something that can bring new forms of collective and conscious human interaction. Thanks to it, any group of people can assemble into a kind of non-hierarchical association that has the capabilities comparable to those of a state or corporation.
According to Greenfield, the idea is that government agencies voluntary associations can be substituted on virtually every level of society in the future, given software products. Members of such groups can remain anonymous with respect to each other if they wish, but their identities will be confirmed, and the authenticity of their will is established through the same processes that guarantee the safety of the cryptocurrency network. This means that each voice will be recorded and, if necessary, always available for subsequent re-examination. As in cryptocurrency’s work, the substitution of one voice by an attacker is impossible without changing the entire chain of preceding blocks, which contain encrypted data on votes. In theory, the Blockchain can even become a tool for the practical implementation of budgeting with public participation on any scale in the spirit of historical precedent.
To date, the Blockchain has already been used in politics — for holding inner-party elections.
One of the first concepts of voting on the detachment was the initiative of the Danish party Liberal Alliance. In 2014, the party leadership proposed to use the technology of the distributed registry when conducting internal voting at the annual meeting of party members in Hvidovre, a suburb of Copenhagen. Interest in Blockchain technology was caused by the autonomy of its work, which does not require the mediation of an intermediary. According to the statement made at that time by the representative of the party, the detachment allows you to “look under the hood” and see what happens in the voting process.
In February 2016, Australian Bitcoin enthusiasts Nathan Spataro and Max Kaye created the “Flux” political party. The concept proposed by the founders assumes the election of six senators who will not initiate initiatives themselves, but will be able to support or reject the proposals of all who are in the party. The “Flux” model involves the use of tokens, which you can either apply for the independent vote, or referred to the competent authorized persons. Six elected senators performing representative functions will vote in parliament for various legislative initiatives according to the distribution of the participants’ votes in the “Flux” Blockchain system.
In March 2016, the US Libertarian Party announced its intention to use the Blockchain technology to election of candidates for inner-party positions in Texas. Thanks to the hardware and software provided by the New York based fintech company, representatives of political association managed to organize the registration and vote count, using Blockchain technology. Three QRcodes were placed at the bottom of each ballot: the first QR-code contained the blockchain address, the second was the ballot ID, and the third was the voting ID. After QR-codes scanning, the data on votes in favor of certain candidates were entered in the Blockchain, which protecting the results of the fraud. A total of 250 delegates took part in the voting.
In the US, this is not the first case of using Blockchain technology in voting. In March 2016, the Republican Party of Utah used Blockchain in the ballot for candidates in the primaries. According to some reports, 59,000 Republicans from Utah registered to participate in the Blockchain voting.
The advantages of electronic voting were estimated in 2007 in Estonia, when the parliamentary elections were organized online. The Estonian internet voting system builds on the Estonian ID card. The card is a regular and mandatory national identity document as well as a smart card allowing for both secure remote authentication and legally binding digital signatures by using the Estonian state supported public key infrastructure. As of March 2007 over 1.08 million cards have been issued (out of a population of about 1.32 million).
The Estonian ID card is also used for authentication in Estonia’s ambitious Internetbased voting program.
In February 2007, Estonia was the first country in the world to institute electronic voting for parliamentary elections. Over 30 000 voters participated in the country’s e-election. In the Parliamentary election of 2011 140,846 votes were cast electronically representing 24% of total votes.
Civil society in many countries is unlikely to affect the current situation, because the millennium generation, most often, passively refers to elections. The Blockchain technology managed to turn the financial industry, forcing many experts to talk about the great prospects for a distributed registry.
About a year ago in Kiev (Ukraine) a group of volunteers and activists from public organizations signed a memorandum on the development of their own detachment service for voting. The system is designed to ensure the transparency of voting results at all levels — from municipal elections to the election of parliamentarians. As the main advantage, the creators of the service note the absence of intermediaries that affect the election results. Voting results recorded in the detachment are open and can be used by state bodies to make strategic decisions. The process of developing a service involves the creation of open source software, and the technology is based on the Ethereum’s Blockchain.
In addition, Ukraine is testing a pilot project built on Blockchain technology and smart contracts: a platform for auctions and a decentralized voting system. In such a system, there is no intermediary or general regulator, which makes it almost impossible to deceive and bribe: it is simply impossible to forge the choice of participants in the chain.
We could bring more and more examples, but it is already clear that the future of electronic elections based on Blockchain is not far off. The results of scientific research and experiments, as well as the first examples of use, prove to all of us that in the near future we will be living witnesses to historical evolution in the electoral system. It would be correct for all experts and who carefully examines this issue, take the process of transformation very seriously.
P.S. Personal recommendation for those who are exploring new and promising projects: I would recommend special attention to the Boulé project. I think Boulé and team will have an impressive future.
