Recounts Should Be Obsolete

We have the technology to vote remotely, prove how we voted, and watch the election results roll out in real time. So why aren’t we?

In the United States, tightly contested Presidential races are starting to feel like the norm, with both 2000 and 2016 resulting in recounts after the winner of the popular vote lost the electoral college.

Some people say this is a fundamental problem with digital voting, but the actual problem is with how modern voting machines are designed. With modern techniques, we could build an electoral system where:

• You could vote from your phone or home computer.
• You can prove that your vote was counted correctly.
• Your vote is still secure and secret, despite being in a public computer.

If this sounds like magic, be assured, it’s merely math-magic.

All of this would be simple if we adopted a couple simple policies:

• Digital ID cards for all citizens, with a private digital key. (Maybe the state can allow you to register your own key pair, or even a Decentralized Identity App, like uPort, that lets you easily revoke & issue your own new keys as well).
• Voting machine software that is free and open to the public for review, criticism, and improvement.

If this is all possible, and our democracy hangs in the balance, why does The U.S. keep hiring private companies to build voting machines that we know are hackable?

For a tour of how different countries have successfully implemented digital voting systems, check out this Ars Technica article.

For a more detailed exploration of how Estonia is making all of this possible today, check out The IEEE Spectrum’s great write-up on the topic.

We have the tools, it’s just a matter of choosing to use them correctly.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensus Systems LLC DBA Consensys. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.