Election Voting: Blockchain Case Studies
Here are more details on the case studies discussed in our “Blockchain Applications: Election Voting” article.
Case Study #1: Voatz — The State of West Virginia, 2018 Federal Elections, USA
On 6 November 2018, the State of West Virginia used Voatz’s blockchain-based mobile voting application to enable overseas voters (including active duty military personnel) to vote in the U.S. midterm elections. It was the first use of blockchain technology in a U.S. federal election.¹ Voatz is a U.S. startup, founded in 2015 that enables citizens to vote in all kinds of elections or voting events via smartphones. In January 2018, it raised US$2.2 million in seed funding.² Since its launch, Voatz has tested its platform in private elections, recording over 75,000 votes in 30 pilots.³
The Voatz application relies on blockchain to create an immutable record of the votes cast, cybersecurity software to detect malware on smartphones, and biometrics for identification and authentication. To cast a ballot, voters must first register through the app by uploading an image of their driver’s license or other photo identification. Then the app instructs them to submit a short video of their own face. Facial recognition technology supplied by a voter’s iPhone or Android device matches the video against the photo ID, and the personal information on the ID is matched to West Virginia’s voter registration database. Once verification is complete, voters can make their selections and submit their ballot by fingerprint or facial recognition. In addition to using technology for verification, the company also has human workers manually reviewing the submitted information. All personally identifiable data is deleted once the vote is secured and does not publicly display any selections made by the voter.
Votes are stored on a public-permissioned blockchain — essentially a database that is distributed and stored in 16 different locations, and where records are secured using complex computational algorithms — and unlocked by county clerks when the polls close.⁴ When they take the votes from the blockchain, they immediately print onto a scannable paper ballots, which are fed into the tabulating machines on the ground at the state level. A certified email receipt is sent to both the designated election office and voters’ email account when the voter casts their ballot. This acts as an audit mechanism and paper backup. Voters may view and verify that receipt and notify officials if there are any discrepancies. The application only functions on pre-determined smartphones that meet security standards and have the latest software updates. If malware detection software finds any potential threat, then the application will prevent users from opening it. Any suspicious activity is flagged for human review. Voters who do not wish to participate or are not eligible to vote by smartphone, can choose to vote by traditional methods.
Prior to the midterm election, the State of West Virginia conducted limited trials with 13 voters from six different countries in the May 2018 Primary Election. The results of the pilots were audited by multiple nationally renowned security companies that concluded:
“the application, votes, blockchain and overall system were secure and no nefarious activity compromised the integrity of the ballots cast or voters’ personal information.”⁵
Following the success of the first pilot, the State of Virginia expanded the project to the General Election in November 2018. Twenty-four of the state’s 55 counties opted-in to the second pilot. A total of 144 voters from 31 countries participated. Both Voatz and the State of West Virginia were pleased with the election results.
“For the first time in our nation’s history, military and overseas citizens were able to cast ballots in a federal election using a mobile device. If this technology were not available, many of those soldiers and citizens would not have had the opportunity to participate in our democracy. … If our expectations hold true, the application’s biometric safeguards, coupled with blockchain technology and a voter-verified digital trail of their ballot, will prove to be a secure alternative to the burdensome absentee voting processes traditionally available to the men and women protecting our freedom.”⁶ — Secretary of State Mac Warner
Now that voting for the midterm elections has been completed, several independent, outside auditors are expected to spend the next few months performing an assessment of the pilot project. Voatz plans to announce more elections in other jurisdictions in 2019.
When the West Virginia pilot was first announced, Wired magazine ran an article called ‘Smartphone Voting is Happening, but No One Knows If It’s Safe’.⁷ The Wired article raised various concerns by voting and security experts that Voatz addressed as follows:⁸
- Security and privacy issues with mobile devices and online voting — Voatz believes it has addressed security issues by using biometrics to authenticate voters, cybersecurity software to detect malware on smartphones, and blockchain ledgers to store the votes without needing to store personal voter information.
- Lack of transparency in the Voatz system and lack of public auditability — Voatz worked with the State of West Virginia and independent third-party companies to audit the system. Voatz runs a bug bounty program for community vetting of its platform releases. Once votes are cast, voters receive an automatic digital receipt. When election officials access the votes, a paper ballot is generated for each mobile vote that can be compared to the voter’s digital receipt and the blockchain record.
- Voatz is a private, for-profit company with too much power over who and how the blockchain is maintained — The Voatz system is built using the HyperLedger blockchain framework first created by IBM, now supported by the Linux foundation. In order to participate in the permissioned blockchain, a voter or auditor must first be verified. In the West Virginia pilot, between 4 to 16 verified validating nodes were to be used, split between multiple cloud providers, each of which are geographically distributed. The blockchain verifiers in the Voatz system is a collection of vetted stakeholders such as Voatz itself, election officials, nonprofit voting auditors, and politicians. In the future, the Secretary of State or an independent State Election Board can increase the number of nodes and designate which organizations (e.g. political parties, universities, the media, NGOs, non-profits, auditors, etc.) can participate in the blockchain network as verifiers. Voatz believes this closely reflects the way current elections are administered where multiple stakeholders are part of the process.⁹
- Previous pilot reported poor user experience — When Utah GOP voters tried to use the Voatz app during their caucus in April, many couldn’t get it to work generating poor app store reviews. Voatz reported that this was because many voters attempted to download the app and authenticate themselves minutes before polls closed, which didn’t give Voatz enough time. There did not appear to be the same user issues in the West Virginia pilot.
Wired magazine noted that although Voatz appeared to have answers to these concerns, critics were not convinced that Voatz adequately addressed the concerns or that the smartphone app was ready for the November 2018 election. The initial results from the election suggest that the critics were wrong but further testing is required and the audit and analysis of results of the West Virginia election will take many months to complete. There may be other issues as Voatz scales to run larger elections, and technology and security issues continue to evolve. However, at this early stage, it would appear that Voatz has achieved some success it building, testing and validating its technology and systems.
Case Study #2: Votem — Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2017 & 2018 Inductee Voting, USA
Blockchain-based mobile voting is also being used for non-government elections such as shareholder voting for company board positions and resolutions at annual general meetings,¹⁰ and music fans voting for the next inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.¹¹ For the 2016 inductee Vote, the Rock Hall allowed fans to vote using an off-the-shelf online voting system that was quickly hacked and negatively affected the credibility and integrity of the vote. For the 2017 vote, the Rock Hall turned to Votem and their blockchain-based mobile voting platform to easily and securely vote online. Votem reported that it processed over 1.8 million votes without fraud, compromise, attacks or hacking of any kind, marking it the largest use of online voting using blockchain to date. Fans voted from all 50 states and over 100 different countries with 60% of votes coming from phones.
“Through Votem’s platform, the Rock Hall had an end-to-end election solution that proved more secure, efficient, reliable, auditable, tamper-proof accessible and cost effective than before with immediate and immutable election data and results”.¹²
More recently, the Votem platform was successfully used for the 2018 vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2019. Votem has made numerous acquisitions of voter registration and election management software and aims to become the new global standard for voting in government and private elections around the world.¹³
Case Study #3: Smartmatic-Cybernetica — Utah GOP Presidential Candidate elections, 2016, USA
In March 2016, Smartmatic-Cybernetica delivered the world’s first online election using a private permissioned blockchain for the Utah Republican party (GOP) caucus to vote on presidential candidates. The platform enabled 24,486 voters to cast their ballots from 45 different countries using their computer, tablet or smartphone.¹⁴ Users had to apply before the caucus date to use the online system. First the party verified their GOP membership and state voter identification, they then issued those users an encrypted ID number to vote with. The election was successful across many fronts — voter participation was high, and the party identified no security concerns or issues with voting accuracy.¹⁵
“Nearly 90% of voters registered to vote online participated in Tuesday’s caucus, marking an extremely high turnout rate. Voters of all ages, from millennials right through to people in their 80s, chose to cast their vote online. Participation was strongest amongst voters aged 56–65. The online system also made the election more inclusive as Utah Republicans voted online from over 45 countries, including places as far away as French Polynesia, South Africa and Japan.”¹⁶
Not all voters felt confident with the online experience.
“Some felt hesitant to use a system where they couldn’t see where their vote went the same way they could when they physically inserted it into a ballot box.”¹⁷
There were some voters who couldn’t figure out the system or were confused about when they needed to sign up or how to cast their vote. Peter Simonsen, who was working on a State governor’s campaign at the time and has since become the assistant director of the Utah GOP, said those concerns were overblown. He said that it was no different to the types of problems that occur at the polling place. Since the experiment, Simonsen said more companies have been approaching the party with different solutions. For its March 2018 caucus, the Utah County Republicans used the blockchain Voatz app to increase participation on changing bylaws.¹⁸ Smartmatic-Cybernetica says that it did not bid to run the smaller Utah County elections.
In May 2018, Smartmatic-Cybernetica also used blockchain in a referendum in Finnmark, Norway.¹⁹ The regional referendum was organised by 19 local authorities from Finnmark County to consult citizens on whether or not to merge with the neighbouring county of Troms. To facilitate participation and keep voters informed, TIVI (the Smartmatic-Cybernetica system) was fully integrated with ID-Porten, a common single sign-on service used to access Norwegian public e-services. Voters used standard web browsers on their computers, tablets or phones to access the system. Automatic SMS based electronic poll cards were sent to remind voters to vote and to inform when their online vote was received. The system also used a permissioned private blockchain as a mechanism to protect and prove ballot box integrity. Despite an option to vote online or vote by traditional paper-based voting at polling stations, 85.5% of all votes were cast online. Mike Summers, Director of the Smartmatic-Cybernetica Centre of Excellence for Internet Voting (SCCEIV), believes that online voting is critical to engaging voters given the increasingly mobile and dispersed electorate.
“The overwhelming preference of voters from all age groups to vote online is a clear demonstration that they trust technology and value convenience”²⁰
Despite the relative success of the Utah and Norway blockchain-based elections, Smartmatic-Cybernetica are not convinced that blockchain is necessary for online voting. As detailed in the next case study, Smartmatic-Cybernetica have been providing non-blockchain technology for internet voting in Estonia since 2005. Smartmatic has also been providing electronic voting technology and solutions around the world since 2000.²¹ Smartmatic-Cybernetica believe that online voting is already proven to work without blockchain, and that concerns over privacy and governance issues in blockchain-based voting systems need further analysis before they can become widespread.
In an August 2018 article, Mike Summers, stated that while blockchain has promise, and can add improvements when applied to discrete parts of the election process, it was not ready for ‘prime time’.²² He outlined the following issues surrounding blockchain and elections:
- Many public blockchains are slow when it comes to performance and scalability and unusable for large scale governmental elections
- The public nature of many blockchains raises issues around voter anonymity and privacy, which are fundamental properties of the democratic process.
- The decentralised nature of many blockchains is at odds with the governance model of elections in which Election Management Bodies are singularly responsible and held accountable for validating election results and verifying the integrity of end-to-end electoral process.
- Blockchain by itself does little to contribute to security of the online voting process. To achieve fully secure, provable online voting requires a range of additional processes and technologies, such as verifiable end-to-end vote encryption as well as other logical physical and procedural security processes.
That said, he writes that ongoing research will solve many of the early-stage performance and privacy issues, and they believe that as the technology evolves, it will play an increasingly important role in elections.
In other articles, Smartmatic-Cybernetica has raised the issues of high energy cost of blockchain systems and that private blockchain raises the issue of finding a suitable set of members to run the blockchain.²³ The SCCEIV continue to research these issues as part of a consortium of European software companies and research organisations examining privacy and security in blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.²⁴ In January 2018, SCCEIV were awarded €4.5 million in funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme to advance the development of cryptographic protocols for privacy and security within the context of distributed ledger.²⁵
Non-Blockchain Case Study #1: Smartmatic-Cybernetica — i-Voting — Government Elections, Estonia (2005 — present)
In 2017, Wired magazine called Estonia “the most advanced digital society in the world”.²⁶ Estonia started building their e-Governance system in 1997, and now more than 99% of public services are available online.²⁷ Estonia became the first nation in history to offer internet voting (‘i-Voting’) in a nationwide election in 2005. Estonia is the only country in the world where citizens have used remote internet voting in the municipal, national and European elections.²⁸ While paper voting is still used, more than 30% of voters in the 2014 and 2015 government elections cast their votes over the internet. The i-Voting system is based on similar cryptographic processes to secure the voting process and data but does not use blockchain technology.²⁹
The Estonian system relies on the Digital ID card that allows each citizen to securely access Estonia’s e-services.,
“Estonians have a unique situation — we have an ID card system and people actually use it. This is an electronic identity and forms a basis to determine who is actually sitting behind a computer — this authentic tool is a necessary attribute for internet voting,”³⁰ — Tarvi Martens, the National Electoral Committee’s head of i-Voting
The government estimates that i-Voting saves over 11,000 working days per election.³¹ This provides strong evidence of the value that can be achieved by secure online voting. Voter turnout in Estonia has risen since the introduction of electronic voting, but given the number of factors that can affect voter turnout, it is not clear that is due to i-Voting or other factors.³²
The Estonian government reports that despite external criticism of i-Voting, the system has proven to be secure.
“[T]here has not been a single incident where an online vote in Estonia was under suspicion — nor has there been any successful hacking episode …The Estonian Information System Authority, which executes supervision over government’s cyber security, … says i-Voting is significantly more secure than paper ballots — safeguards are always in place. This includes audits, not only for the IT-system, but also for the procedures and the results. It includes constant monitoring of the system and improvements and patches throughout time.”³³
The i-Voting system was developed prior to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets. Voters access the system using a lightweight app for computers (PC, Mac and Linux). Although i-Voting is not currently possible on smart devices, Smartmatic-Cybernetica expect to introduce support for mobile voting in future elections.
The i-Voting system was originally built by Cybernetica, an Estonian R&D lab. It later partnered with Smartmatic, a world leader in voting technologies and solutions to develop TIVI, the online voting solution behind i-Voting today. Smartmatic provides technology and services to six of the eight countries pioneering election automation: Belgium, Brazil, Estonia, the Philippines, USA and Venezuela.The company has managed elections across five continents, processing over 3.7 billion votes. It serves customers through an organization comprising over 600 employees across 12 offices around the world.³⁴
As discussed in Case Study #3, Smartmatic-Cybernetica have used blockchain technology for online voting in the USA and Norway. Although these elections were successful, they remain concerned by governance and privacy issues that surround blockchain voting.
Non-Blockchain Case Study #2: Scytl — iVote — NSW State Elections, Australia (2011 — present)
In Australia, online voting has been used in various elections including the 2011 and 2015 State elections in New South Wales where the iVote system is available for people with disabilities, those who experience difficulties reading and people who live more than 20 kilometres from a polling place, or who are travelling interstate or overseas on polling day. Voters could cast their vote using their computer, smartphone or tablet. In 2015, 283,669 votes were cast using the iVote system. An independent survey reported that 97% of voters were satisfied or very satisfied with iVote.³⁵
The iVote system is provided by Scytl, worldwide leader in secure electronic voting, election management and election modernization solutions. Over the last 10 years, Scytl has managed over 100,000 electoral events electronically across more than 20 countries, including the USA, Mexico, France, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Bosnia Herzegovina and India. Scytl provides a range of election solutions including election training, poll worker management, online voter registration and online voting.³⁶ In terms of online voting, Scytl use ‘advanced cryptographic protocols’, to ensure voter privacy, election integrity, end-to-end security, vote correctness and fully verifiability. Scytl do not use blockchain.³⁷
Despite allegations that there were security problems in the 2015 election, the NSW Electoral Commission electoral commission found that vulnerabilities were overstated and not supported by verification tests.³⁸ The Commission conceded there are risks associated with using web browsers but not higher than the risks of other forms of voting. In a November 2016 Parliamentary report, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters investigated the claims that the iVote system was vulnerable to undetectable vote tampering.³⁹ The NSW Electoral Commission stated that the risk was low and required a high level of technical expertise and certain pre-conditions. However, it did call for an independent panel of experts to conduct a full inquire into the iVote system before the 2019 State Election and that the NSW Government does not expand iVote beyond its existing role to give access to voting to people with disabilities and those away from polling places on the day of election. In January 2019, the NSW Electoral Commissioner invited interested parties to apply to review the iVote source code as part of a process to identify technical issues or vulnerabilities.⁴⁰
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice or endorsement of any blockchain technology, cryptocurrency or specific provider, service or offering. Blockchain technology is an early stage technology that is constantly changing and has many unknowns. Cryptocurrencies are speculative, complex and involve significant risks — they are highly volatile and sensitive to many factors. Consider your own circumstances, and obtain your own advice, before relying on this information. You should also verify the nature of any product or service (including its legal status and relevant regulatory requirements) before making any decisions.
Written by Dr. Denise Tambanis for the Blockchain Philanthropy Foundation, supporting global charities and accelerating humanitarian initiatives through blockchain technology. For comments and questions regarding this article, please contact the author.
Notes and references
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/06/west-virginians-countries-have-voted-by-mobile-device-biggest-blockchain-based-voting-test-ever/?utm_term=.883f41a7765c,https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/defending-vote-casting-using-blockchain-based-mobile-voting-applications-government#_ftn17
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/voatz-raises-22-million-seed-round-led-by-medici-ventures-300578763.htmlhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nimsim/
- Prior to the federal election, Tusk Montgomery Philanthropies, West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office, and the Voatz team conducted numerous third-party penetration testing and source code audits and reported no issues. https://blog.voatz.com/?p=454
- https://digitalchamber.org/the-future-of-voting-is-blockchain/https://voatz.com/faq.html
- https://sos.wv.gov/news/Pages/11-16-2018-A.aspx
- https://sos.wv.gov/news/Pages/11-16-2018-A.aspx
- https://www.wired.com/story/smartphone-voting-is-happening-west-virginia/
- Other articles raised similar concerns about West Virginia’s introduction of mobile phone voting for midterm elections. For example, https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/06/technology/mobile-voting-west-virginia-voatz/index.html
- https://voatz.com/faq.html
- Nasdaq successfully completed a test using blockchain technology to run shareholder proxy voting on its Estonian exchange in January 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/nasdaq-blockchain-idUSL1N1FA1XK https://business.nasdaq.com/media/Blockchain%20Mutual%20Fund%20Strategy%20SEB%20and%20Nasdaq%202018_tcm5044-61791.pdf
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T94Uf4ML5Ahttps://www.marketwatch.com/story/from-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-to-public-elections-how-blockchain-based-voting-is-closer-than-you-think-2018-03-28
- https://votem.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RRHoF-Case-Study.pdf
- https://votem.com/news/press-releases/votem-acquires-election-software-and-online-voting-company-everyone-counts/
- https://www.smartmatic.com/uploads/tx_news/Utah_Smartmatic_CaseStudy2018.PDF https://tivi.io/case/utah/
- http://www.govtech.com/data/GT-OctoberNovember-Securing-the-Vote.html
- https://tivi.io/case/utah/
- http://www.govtech.com/data/GT-OctoberNovember-Securing-the-Vote.html
- https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/utah-county-republicans-can-now-participate-in-caucus-remotely-thanks/article_cb81e8a4-8906-5842-b903-9931bebadb51.html
- http://www.smartmatic.com/news/article/online-voting-participation-reaches-85-during-referendum-in-norway/ https://finance.yahoo.com/news/smartmatic-online-voting-participation-reaches-130000758.html
- http://www.smartmatic.com/news/article/online-voting-participation-reaches-85-during-referendum-in-norway/
- https://www.smartmatic.com/about/
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ballots-blockchain-should-we-believe-hype-mike-summers/
- https://www.ivotingcentre.ee/pages/about-us.htmlhttps://eprint.iacr.org/2018/685.pdf
- The project called “PRIViLEDGE” is a consortium of key Euorpean players including Smartmatic — Cybernetica, IBM Research Zurich, Guardtime AS, Universities of Tartu, Eindhoven, Salerno, Edinburgh, GRNET and GUNET.
- https://www.smartmatic.com/news/article/smartmatic-cybernetica-awarded-european-commission-blockchain-research-project/https://priviledge-project.eu/news/eu-research-boosts-privacy-and-anonymity-via-cryptographic-protocols-in-distributed-ledgers
- https://www.wired.co.uk/article/estonia-e-resident
- https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/i-Votinghttps://www.valimised.ee/sites/default/files/uploads/eng/IVXV-UK-1.0-eng.pdf
- http://www.democraticaudit.com/2013/10/03/the-estonian-experience-shows-that-while-online-voting-is-faster-and-cheaper-it-hasnt-increased-turn-out/
- Technically, the i-Voting system is based on the same cryptographic processes that underlying blockchain technology, that is using hash-chain based digital timestamping to verify and add blocks of data in a chain. However, it relies on centrally managed distributed systems (public bulletin board) to store and manage the data chains rather than public permissionless blockchain. http://www.smartmatic.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Factsheet_TIVI.pdfhttp://www.smartmatic.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Whitepaper_Online_Voting_Challenge_Considerations_TIVI.pdf
- https://e-estonia.com/estonias-i-voting-more-popular-more-secure/
- https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/i-Voting/
- https://tivi.io/case/estonian-elections-2014-2015/ https://www.valimised.ee/en/archive/statistics-about-internet-voting-estoniahttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/95665595.pdf
- In 2014, a number of academics and other individual performed an independent evaluation of the i-Voting system based on election observation, code review and laboratory testing. They claimed operational security issues as well as system insecurities that left the system open to attack. https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/ivoting-ccs14.pdf The article was not peer reviewed and Estonian voting officials dispute the claims made. https://e-estonia.com/estonias-i-Voting-more-popular-more-secure/
- https://www.smartmatic.com/about/
- https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/About-us/Public-interest-information/iVote-reports/Response-from-the-NSW-Electoral-Commission-to-iVot
- https://www.scytl.com/en/election-solutions/
- Scytl does appear to be researching blockchain technology in internet voting. https://www.scytl.com/en/scytls-blockchain-based-internet-voting-takes-stage-international-conference-business-information-systems/
- https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/About-us/Public-interest-information/iVote-reports/Response-from-the-NSW-Electoral-Commission-to-iVot
- https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/committees/DBAssets/InquiryReport/ReportAcrobat/6091/Administration%20of%20the%202015%20NSW%20Election%20and%20Related%20Matters.pdf
- https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/About-us/Reports/iVote-reports/iVote-source-code-review-invitation
