Future of Electronic Voting System using Blockchain Technology
Future of eVoting using Blockchain Technology
India as a country has always been dependent on voting machines for their elections. Though it started as a safe and better system than paper ballots at the beginning of this century, slowly the corruption related to EVMs started to arise all over the country.
In the post-pandemic era, it has become an absolute need to look for an alternative. This is where the idea of the online election came into the picture.
This internet-based technology helps governments and organizations to create and manage elections without any difficulty. The voters can also vote in more private and secured places, resulting in an unbiased and transparent election.
The Blockchain Technology:
Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and Blockchain are a few of the hot topics roaming around the market at the present time.
Blockchain was first introduced by a person named, Satoshi Nakamoto. It basically contains blocks which is mainly a list of information, containing the transaction data, record time, and a hash of the previous blocks. Blockchain-based online voting includes two parts, block, and chain.
At first, a voter needs to use his voter’s ID to choose a ballot which is then signed by using a private key. After that, the ballot and signature are verified and finally, the ballot gets sealed.
Though the system of blockchain is completely transparent, there are some major concerns related to this technology.
Let’s check out a few concerning issues with the blockchain-based eVoting system
Secrecy of the ballot:
Secrecy is one of the most concerning requirements in any kind of election. A secret ballot represents a system where the votes can only be traced down by the election management and no one else.
A voter should have 100% privacy and should not be threatened or manipulated to forcefully vote for some particular party or candidate.
In the case of blockchain-based elections, the transparency of the open ledger system allows thousands of voters to keep a ledger of each vote.
Through total encryption and dummy identity of the voters, this issue can be resolved. It will help the voter to keep his identity protected and safe.
Counting of results:
In most elections across the country, the vote-counting process generally begins after the voting procedure is over. In Blockchain, the voting data gets authenticated by the ledger keepers.
They get an idea of the voting trends as well as every data related to the voting procedure way before the voting process is concluded.
In a recent report from Grand View Research, it is suggested that the entire market of blockchain, including the election procedures, will grow to 20 billion dollars in annual revenues by the end of 2024. It clearly suggests that the technology will get upgraded in the near future to resolve such issues.
Time and Cost of elections:
Each vote in Blockchain needs to be authenticated. These multiple authentications require a lot of time to conclude. The eVoting process that uses blockchain spends a lot of time authenticating each vote.
Apart from that, each transaction in the blockchain has a block time that generally takes some time to generate. The computing requirements, data storage, and exchange cost a fortune.
Each ledger has its own cost for computing. In the case of the elections, the management needs to bear that cost.
In the near future, eVoting can rule the world of politics in this country, as the procedure is easier to follow and manage. The issues need to be resolved before the government can implement this system in the near future.
