Five Voting Problems Blockchain Could Fix
Blockchain has the potential to solve some of the issues facing voting procedures. We look at five of the problem areas where blockchain can be instrumental.
One of the big lessons of 2020 was that voting systems seem to be confronted with significant issues. Increasing trust and transparency are core necessities. Otherwise, we could easily see repeats of the problems and consequences that arose in the USA — and more recently in Myanmar.
Blockchain technology’s core strengths include increased trust and transparency. Those qualities are significant reasons why it can be considered a prime candidate for upgrades to existing voting technology solutions.
In 2020, a group of blockchain experts, including Couger Inc., came together to form ETH Terakoya. The organisation’s goals include exploring how blockchain solutions can upgrade and evolve — or in certain situations, replace — existing voting systems.
During its work, the group identified many possible upgrades, including the five presented in this article.
1: Updating Voter Information
In current voting systems, one core issue is whether a particular person has the rights to vote in a given election. This is often based around home address at the time of the election. Here, blockchain can provide a strong alternative to existing processes.
One issue is that people’s residence area may change due to, for instance, moving during the election period. In such cases, blockchain solutions tied to other public systems, such as land and home registry databases, can dynamically update lists of eligible voters.
2: Speeding Up Vote Counting
In current systems, voters bring a pre-mailed, paper ballot to the polling station and cast their ballots at the designated polling station. Alternatively, voting happens through electronic voting systems. In many places, ballot boxes are collected in gymnasiums, etc. The ballot counting is done manually and is very time-consuming.
Blockchain systems increase transparency for electronic voting systems, thereby increasing trust in the results. For systems that still rely on paper-based voting, blockchain enables digital vote counting at much greater speeds.
3: Increase Voter Turnouts
People with mobility issues, the elderly, and many people in rural areas can face difficulties going to the polling stations. Going to vote can take a lot of time and be quite challenging. Furthermore, we can only go when the polling stations are open. Keeping them open and running is generally expensive, which means relatively short opening times.
Off-premise voting, perhaps even through your mobile phone, is possible with blockchain. Its hash functions mean that each voter can be assigned a unique code and identify that could enable voting from home without risking voter fraud.
4: Lower Risk of Errors
Current voting systems with humans counting paper votes can lead to errors. Furthermore, there is an increased risk of various parties believing that the counting process has led to fraud. This issue has been seen recently in both the US presidential election and the general election in Myanmar.
Electronic, blockchain-based voting procedures would eliminate ballot-counting mistakes. Furthermore, it could help eliminate any errors in vote handling and issues surrounding ambiguous votes. This is achieved through unique identifiers assigned to voters and accurately checking that a voter has voted and had that vote counted once. The whole process is handled by the computer, thereby eliminating the risk of human errors.
5: Guaranteeing Anonymity
Who you vote for should be completely confidential. Furthermore, personal information should be protected so that an individual voter’s race, sex, age cannot be identified. In the current public office elections, secret ballots and methods of ballot box management are used to ensure the anonymity of the content of votes, but any voter visiting a polling station can be readily identified. There is also a risk that polling staff can identify voters in connection with vote tallying — especially at smaller polling stations.
Blockchain extends this confidentiality by using smart contracts to allow off-premise blockchain-based voting. The identity of a specific voter is also protected throughout the voting process.
Find Out More
The information presented in this article is partially based on the working reports created by ETH Terakoya during its ongoing projects to increase the usability and efficiency of voting processes through the implementation of Blockchain technology.
You can find much more information, including the working reports, on the ETH Terakoya website.
