A Revolution in Democracy “Blockchain”

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Coinmonks

5 min readFeb 17, 2022

Introduction

Technology is developing rapidly and changing our lives by adding our lives behind it. Although some call it a change, I want to call this change that started with the technology as a revolution. After the invention of the internal combustion engine, after the revolution of the steam engine, then electricity, internet technology suddenly became the center of our lives. We can now do the transactions that we used to go to institutions and branches with a click of a button, internet banking or electronic government, we don’t need to go to schools to get education anymore, we can get our education from our homes via our smart devices. Now, states do not need to use tons of kilograms of paper and print money, they can print billions of dollars with a single click and instantly launch virtual money. But, has everything in our lives been able to adapt to the internet revolution so much, for example, how well has democracy adapted to this revolution, can elections be held online now? How safe are those cryptocurrencies printed by the states, or are the money transfers and financial market transactions that I make with a single click as safe as described?

Blockchain Technology

Blockchain provides a permanent recording of transactions in a network. It is similar to a system database but uses a decentralized ledger instead of the traditional end-to-end, allowing each participant in the network to have their own copy of the ledger and be able to see all transactions. Each block is protected by an encrypted reference associated with the previous block, so it is quite difficult to attack or hack the system.

We can think of blockchain as a world where every contract, transaction, job, and payment is digitally recorded and signed in a way that is identified, verified, stored, and shared. Every single step of the blockchain is transparent and secure, as every change in this system requires consensus. This ensures a high level of reliability of the system and eliminates both risks and the need for intermediaries.

Electronic Voting

Estonia was the first state to use the electronic voting system, which Europe has been testing since 2000. Estonian citizens entered the voting website in 2005 via their chip ID cards and cast their votes. In these elections, the rate of the people who voted on the internet was over 33 percent. In the elections that took place later, Estonian citizens were able to vote on their mobile devices with a sim card. After Estonia, electronic voting was also carried out in other European countries, Canada, and even in India, despite its overpopulation. It is not electronic voting that worries citizens and administrations, but on the contrary, electronic voting saves time and money, as well as increases the rate of participation in elections. Concerns are the security of these elections and access to elections. Will the citizens be connected to the system only once, will they have a chance to withdraw their votes after voting, what kind of entry procedure will be applied, and how safe and the most important question is this procedure, how will the confidentiality of these votes be ensured, how will their manipulation be prevented?

Systems Used and Can Be Used for Electronic Voting

Two systems are currently being discussed for electronic voting. the centralized system where data is collected after each voting created on a central database, and the other is the system created through the blockchain and each chain is a center. In the paragraphs above, I mentioned the concerns about electronic voting and this process, the most important of these concerns is security. Experts discussing the issue are of the opinion that electronic voting to be built on a centralized system will create a security vulnerability. How well can a single database and system be protected against cyber-attacks? This is where the other system comes into play, the blockchain.

Electronic Voting System with Blockchain Infrastructure

In the paragraphs above, I briefly explained the working logic of the blockchain. Citizens who will vote in the electronic voting system with this infrastructure will enter through their electronic chip ID cards or only their own biometric data. Once they enter the system, cast their votes, and save, they will not have a chance to use it again. When the voting process takes place in the system, a ring will be added to the chain and connected to the previous ring by processing its own data, and this process will be repeated for each vote. In this way, all the rings will carry the data of the rings before and after them, as if they were a center. In order to attack the electronic voting system with the blockchain infrastructure, it is necessary to attack all the rings because each ring contains the data before and after it as if it were a central system. It is impossible to attack all the rings at the same time and to capture or change this data since each ring is a center in itself, therefore, experts believe that the security problem in electronic voting can be solved with blockchain technology.

Conclusion

A Chinese proverb says; “ When the wind of change starts to blow, some build walls, others build windmills.” Technology has turned into a revolution for our lives. We will either build a wall and stand against this revolution in vain, or we will take advantage of that revolution with a windmill. Technology has brought goodness and dangers along with beauty, and the important thing it will bring is to be able to eliminate dangers with those beauties. The electronic voting system not only saves money and time for the states, provides high turnout in elections, but also poses a security threat; what we need to do is to take this innovation and beauty brought to us by technology and to eliminate the dangers with technology again…

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References

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A Revolution in Democracy “Blockchain”

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Written by Şaban İbrahim GÖKSAL