Korea to create a large-scale blockchain-based voting system
The Korean government is pursuing its efforts in pushing the adoption of blockchain technology applications that will have a significant impact on people’s daily lives, such as a blockchain-based online voting system allowing more than 10 million people to vote. The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) announced on June 23 that it will promote the ‘2021 Blockchain Expansion Project’ program in cooperation with the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) with the aim of supporting areas that can contribute to strengthening trust and non-face-to-face economy while enhancing efficiency by leveraging the advantages of the blockchain technology.
In particular, this program, which is promoted in accordance with the ‘Digital New Deal’ and the Blockchain technology expansion strategy, aims at providing follow-up support to projects that have successfully confirmed their potential through the ‘Blockchain Pilot Project’ program of the MSIT.
Five major areas will be supported in this year’s expansion project program: online voting (National Election Commission), donation (Privately-led), social welfare (Ministry of Health and Welfare), renewable energy (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy), and postal service (Korea Post).
As to the online voting, the National Election Commission plans to develop a ‘blockchain-based online voting system’ allowing over 10 million people to vote. The online voting system, which was initially developed in 2018 as a blockchain pilot project, was first applied on a small scale. With the support of the ‘2021 Blockchain Expansion Project’ program, the National Election Commission will be able to further develop the online voting system so that it can be leveraged by over 10 million people in a non-face-to-face environment. The online voting system will anonymize the voting results and store them separately to ensure confidentiality of votes. Also, it will store encrypted data on the blockchain to prevent forgery and alteration of data. In addition, the new online voting system plans to integrate a function that enables the verification of the voter’s identity and identify legitimate voters through DID (Decentralized Identifier) to prevent invalid votes and double voting. Through this method, it is expected that the online voting system will increase reliability and reduce costs related to voting process.
Regarding the project related to donation, a private company will build a blockchain-based donation management system that can reflect the entire process from fundraising to delivery of the donation to the beneficiaries. The donation platform, promoted as a blockchain pilot project in 2019, was originally built to support transparent management of the fundraising process. With the support of the ‘2021 Blockchain Expansion Project’ program, the platform will support real-time verification of the entire process until the donation is sent to the final beneficiaries. The platform has deployed a DID technology, which supports the identification of donors and beneficiaries while enabling the verification of welfare workers’ qualifications. DID here ensures donors to provide their desired donation items to the desired donation organization.
Lastly, in the area of mailing services, Korea Post will develop a ‘blockchain-based mailing service integrated customer management system’ that combines mailing, deposit, and insurance services into one. An e-mail mailbox was originally built through the ‘2019 Blockchain Pilot Project’. The ‘2021 Blockchain Expansion Project’ program will implement to the existing service the customer management system, which have been segmented into different services based on DID so that all related services can be used with one ID. With a single login, the company plans to increase user convenience by enabling users to easily get access to all postal services, from mail management and deposits to insurance and related services.
Our View: With the promotion of the ‘2021 Blockchain Expansion Project’ program, the Korean government is providing a decisive follow-up support to projects that have the potential to disrupt services used by a significant number of users. Among these projects, the online voting system is noteworthy given that it has the potential to be leveraged nationwide upon the success of the application that will take place with over 10 million voters. Voting is an essential right for citizens and the underlying technology enabling the realization of this critical human right shall be trustworthy, reliable while being able to run smoothly when used by a large number of users. By fostering an online voting system to be built atop a blockchain technology, the government is showing its confidence on this technology. We can also note that the online voting system will integrate a DID technology to enhance reliability in the voting process. Given that voter frauds remain important not only in developing countries but also in developed countries, the application of a DID technology combined with a blockchain to an online voting system will provide a fascinating use case that could serve as a best practice worldwide.
