Blockchain technology has the power to transform voting by increasing trustworthiness, security, and traceability. In this blog, we'll look at how it can be utilized to address challenges associated with electronic voting systems as well as improve integrity during voting processes. Its transparent yet decentralized nature helps strengthen electronic voting security as well as transparency record-keeping practices, thereby building trustworthiness among voters.
What Is Blockchain Voting?
Blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that securely and transparently records transactions, creating an auditable record of every vote cast on it. Blockchain can also be utilized as part of voting procedures to produce auditable records of every vote cast in any election cycle.
- Voter Identification: Cryptographic techniques provide a secure method to authenticate voter identities without disclosing personal details.
- Transparency and Immutability: Every vote cast on our platform is stored as a blockchain transaction, rendering them immutable.
Blockchain Is Transforming Online Voting
Online voting has grown increasingly popular due to reduced costs and enhanced voter participation rates. However, its critics point out additional security threats associated with it. Electronic voting systems must be secure, reliable, user-friendly, and accurate for the successful adoption of these voting methods.
Unfortunately, potential issues related to them have prevented their widespread implementation in many instances. Blockchain offers an innovative solution by creating decentralized voting nodes that operate like decentralized voting booths. Blockchain's non-repudiation, distributed security features, and end-to-end validation capabilities make it an attractive solution.
Secure Voter Data Registrations.
Accessibility challenges for voters go beyond physical accessibility issues. By manipulating voter registration records, malicious actors may prevent voters from participating in elections - undermining both the credibility and trustworthiness of its outcome.
- Blockchain could play an essential part in providing voter registration security. Citizens and government officials alike could update voter records more securely using it; its nature allows an audit trail of who made changes and when.
- Watchdogs can monitor changes made to voting records using blockchain technologies, keeping an eye out for suspicious activities or purges that might take place.
Secure Mail-In And In-Person Voting
Some citizens are concerned that their ballots have been altered or stolen following in-person or mail voting.
- Blockchain security makes electronic voting an effective solution to prevent votes from being changed after being cast but before results have been tabulated.
- This system allows voters to cast their ballots at polling stations using electronic voting machines that record voting data onto Blockchain technology and produce paper vote receipts for audit purposes.
- Voters and independent monitors alike can then verify if their votes were recorded accurately, with results matching up with what voters cast their ballot for.
Voting On Mobile Blockchain
Online voting has long been the subject of heated discussion and controversy, drawing both enthusiastic and critical comments alike. To bypass difficulties associated with voting in person, many voters in rural areas, foreigners, physically disabled people, and others already use remote voting options such as mobile voting devices to cast ballots remotely. Such initiatives increase voter turnout.
- Blockchain platform could provide an efficient means of protecting voting data. Blockchain records voters who cast votes with connected devices.
- Auditable results can be verified: voters can ensure their ballot has been correctly recorded. In contrast, election monitors can ascertain whether or not it reflects what was actually voted upon by voters.
- Blockchain platform voting solutions hold tremendous promise as an improvement on other methods currently used for distance voting, such as mail-in votes, faxes, or emails. Blockchain network voting ensures both integrity and accuracy when transmitting voices to election administrators.
- Electronic voting may marginalize some voters from participating, such as seniors, those without literacy skills, or rural voters with lower income who feel intimidated by new technologies or do not possess devices capable of connecting to the internet.
Cybersecurity threats like computer viruses and hacking should never hinder mobile voters from exercising their franchise. Following principles when designing software has led to more secure products thanks to collaboration and independence among security experts who test code for bugs or vulnerabilities; such software could compromise voting integrity along with its reputation of fair, honest, and transparent elections.
Assigned Tasks Of Transmitting Polling Station Results
At present, elections' integrity has often been threatened by improper aggregation and counting of votes at either national or regional levels - not polling stations themselves. Blockchain may serve as an invaluable asset in safely transmitting voices from individual polling places to national tabulation centers, raising the bar against any attempt at manipulation across more polling spots at once.
- Blockchain could facilitate the transmission of polling station results for every candidate at each polling station, as well as ballot reconciliation data to enable election officials to compare official results later to inputted numbers.
- Blockchain audit trails would allow monitors to assess any legitimate changes made by polling companies independently.
Monitor Independently Elections Validated By Blockchain
Independent monitoring strengthens electoral legitimacy by including impartial observation and making sure stakeholders in elections cannot subvert fair competition. Media, election observation groups, and political parties all play vital roles in making specific election technology used during polling processes secure, auditable, and auditable.
- Blockchain offers independent observers new possibilities to monitor election results in real-time. It is equipped with technical know-how, and nonpartisan groups of election observers could utilize it to keep an eye on polling station transmission of results, changes to voter files, or even individual ballots cast during elections.
- Election authorities should support and provide technical assistance to groups to enable them to navigate this new space effectively.
New Technology And Election Process: Special Issues
Elections carry enormously high stakes and offer little room for error or the chance to rectify mistakes afterward. New technologies pose additional threats to election integrity; to maintain legitimacy and validity during voting processes, certain safeguards should be in place:
New Technologies Must Be Adopted Only After Having Received Adequate Public Education
People must understand how the new systems operate, be able to see them in action, and have complete trust that they won't be used to manipulate or rig elections. Implementation of new technology during elections could take years instead of just months.
An Independent And High-Capacity Election Administrator Must Oversee Any New Technology Implementation
Many elections have demonstrated how improper implementation of new technologies can erode voter trust in their systems and undermine legitimacy; many voters who lose at the polls often blame it as one cause of their loss.
Critical Stakeholders Should Be Consulted by Election Authorities To Assess The Benefits And Risks Of Any Technological Solutions Under Consideration For Election Administration
Members from marginalized groups, leaders within civil society, and other constituencies must have confidence that the technology used is fair for everyone involved in an election environment; otherwise, the perception of unreliability could undermine trust in elections altogether. Therefore, transparent and competitive procurement processes for technology procurement are of vital importance in order to preserve confidence.
Also Read: Exploring the Endless Possibilities: The Wide Range of Applications for Blockchain Technology
Understand The Challenges Involved With Electronic Voting
Electronic voting presents unique security and trustworthiness challenges. Hacking, tampering, and unauthorized access may erode voter faith in the process; Blockchain ledgers provide improved level of security, transparency, and traceability, which helps restore voters' confidence in election processes.
Blockchain Technology Offers New Way To Vote Electronically
Blockchain technology brings many advantages to electronic voting. The immutability and decentralized nature of its private Blockchain network ensure voting records remain safe from being altered or falsified. In contrast, its cryptographically secure algorithms, consensus algorithms ensure privacy and integrity. Finally, its transparency enables stakeholders to monitor every transaction more closely.
Blockchain And Electronic Voting: Advantages And Disadvantages
Blockchain can bring many benefits to electronic voting
- Blockchain technology's decentralized nature and cryptographic algorithms offer strong security against unauthorized manipulation.
- Transparent and Unmodifiable Data Storage: Blockchain technology offers secure data storage, which makes voting transparent while increasing transparency and accountability.
- Blockchain allows stakeholders to easily track and verify voting transactions to ensure accuracy and integrity during the voting process.
Blockchain offers many advantages but also presents some significant challenges.
- Scalability and performance: Ensuring electronic voting systems based on Blockchain can handle large numbers of votes efficiently is a challenge that calls for careful design and optimization of any electronic voting solution.
- Accessibility and Usability: To make blockchain-based voting systems usable by voters, user-friendly interfaces and accessible technology must be ensured.
- Public perception and adoption: Establishing trust while also informing the general public of blockchain technologies are vital steps in increasing voter turnout in electronic voting systems based on blockchains.
The Traditional Voting System Currently Needs To Overcome Significant Obstacles
- Security Issues: Traditional systems can be susceptible to hacking, fraud, and tampering, which threaten election integrity by unauthorized access or manipulating ballot papers.
- Human error may also create errors when manually tallying votes; any discrepancies could invalidate election results if ballots were misplaced or miscounted.
- Inefficiency: Voting methods requiring manual labor can often be expensive and time-consuming, from counting paper ballots to keeping physical records that could delay an announcement.
- Accessibility Issues: Due to physical disability or geographical distance, specific individuals may find it challenging to reach the polling station - creating potential disenfranchisement among voters.
- Traditional voting systems make it challenging to accurately verify each voter, making it hard for electoral process authorities to guarantee that every voter casts only one ballot.
- Transparency: Traditional voting processes lack clarity when it comes to their voting processes, often prompting accusations of unfairness and fraud.
- Election officials often incur substantial costs related to printing paper ballots, setting up polling stations, and hiring staff members who manually count votes.
- Limited voting options: Certain paper-based voting systems need to accommodate flexible voting methods like early and absentee balloting - something that may inhibit some voters from casting ballots and limit participation rates overall.
Many countries are adopting electronic voting and blockchain technology into their electoral systems to address challenges associated with electoral management.
Real-World Case Studies And Implementations
Blockchain protocol in electronic voting: Examples from real-world applications
- Estonia's e-governance System: Estonia has successfully deployed an e-governance system utilizing Blockchain, including voting via this medium. This implementation illustrates both its benefits and viability for secure presidential election results.
- West Virginia Pilot Project: West Virginia successfully conducted a pilot using the public Blockchain network, decentralized network, permissioned network, and entire network for voting purposes in their state election process, which proved its viability for improving security and efficiency within voting processes.
- Other promising initiatives: In various countries around the world, several projects are exploring Blockchain's potential in solving some of the issues related to traditional voting systems.
Trust Is Essential To Running Any Successful Business.
Kare Kjelstrom, chief technology officer of Concordium, told Cointelegraph that any voting system requires trust. Trust can be difficult to attain in specific scenarios; one in-person vote involves allowing listing (only qualified voters may participate); identification when casting their ballot; anonymity during casting such that the vote cannot be traced back to its source; secure locations provided by government protection services and immutability so released franchises cannot be changed or altered post-vote casting;
- Kjelstrom commented that any digital system designed to replace manual voting must address these same concerns in order to create trust. Still, Blockchain decentralized applications could provide part of a solution.
- Kjelstrom explained that public, decentralized blockchains are invariably immutable by default, and transactions on them may remain anonymous. Yet, anyone anywhere can inspect them at any time.
Public Or Permitted Chains
Amrita Dhillon is an associate professor in King's College London's Department of Political Economics and told Cointelegraph: "The central challenge I see with elections, as opposed to corporate governance, is having access to voter data without needing permission - since voters may provide data that may contain personal information they do not wish to make public and third parties cannot always be trusted."
"The second difficulty is that we are unable to stop anybody from pressuring voters to cast an electronic ballot at that moment; regrettably, we are helpless to stop any attempts at forcing this citizen."
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Permissioned blockchains may not provide the solution as some have claimed; their governance rests solely with a single entity or small group of individuals who control everything within it. Kjelstrom noted how, in an extreme scenario, private hybrid Blockchains could even be changed, or elections can even be altered through malicious intent by those guarding it; although such manipulation may not pose significant concerns in Western nations, in many parts of the globe, this issue must be tackled head-on.
Kjelstrom suggested that Concordium (a public layer-1 blockchain) might be the right ledger technology to power general elections.
Goggin stated there are multiple approaches for creating permissioned hybrid Blockchains; if these fail to provide at least an auditable record of voting, they likely will die in increasing public confidence in elections and increasing trust in elected representatives. He considers himself "an enthusiastic supporter" of both distributed and public blockchain technologies.
Privacy can be an intricate matter when public elections are involved. Vitalik, However, opined on his blog, "Blockchain Voting Is Overrated by Uninformed but Underrated by Informed." Buterin saw encryption as one solution to address privacy challenges in voting systems.
Goggin suggests something similar. Horizon State could ask its client to "hash," i.e., scramble or encrypt the identities of eligible voters before providing them to Horizon State; that way, neither Horizon State nor their client could quickly determine who or how someone voted.
It suggests, on her behalf, a compromise in which "some parts are centralized," with voters required to present themselves at booths where their identities will be checked before casting their voting, but "subsequent parts can be more secure and tamper-proof."
Technical Limits
In 2014, Moscow implemented an Active Citizen electronic voting platform so Muscovites could have their say on non-political decisions. By 2017, Ethereum blockchain-Based electronic voting system polling had become part of several polls run in this city, and polls involved 220,000 voters who could audit each result by any voter. Still, these also revealed some limitations with scale.
Proof-of-work platforms attained a maximum rate of approximately 1,000 transactions an hour (16,7 transactions per second]. Nir Kshetri of the University of North Carolina Greensboro's Bryan School of Business and Economics noted that such an increased voting volume from more than 12 million Moscow citizens could easily overwhelm it, hence concluding that Ethereum's PoW version wasn't "sufficient" in managing national elections.
However, in 2023, things may change considerably with Ethereum 2.0's introduction of Sharding, which could significantly accelerate chain speed to 100,000 TPS, increasing "Ethereum's appeal for voting," said Mr. Riggis. Kshetri believes that blockchains need time to develop before being considered for elections, with each generation likely becoming more secure as time progresses.
Buterin stated in 2021 that security remains an issue when it comes to elections, and blockchain voting is best used in small tests in the short term [...] At present, computers cannot guarantee enough protection. Kjelstrom noted that online transactions could occur instantly, unlike with manual voting systems. He warned of software-driven attacks against electronic voting systems, which could "potentially compromise or affect them, as well as possibly the vote."
Usability Of Blockchain Voting
Voting via Blockchain presents both technical and political-social hurdles to surmount; there may also be political or societal issues at play that must be navigated successfully. Piekarska highlighted, "The technology exists; we can start right away." She went on to assert, "we can take immediate steps toward realizing this project." Piekarska noted that their constituents don't include just tech-savvy DAO members but instead people like his mother who are still having difficulties banking online.
Kjelstrom expressed confidence that national elections using blockchain voting would occur soon enough - "Hopefully not decades yet." Piekarska stated that blockchain voting could arrive tomorrow or in 60-50 years, depending on numerous factors lining up correctly. Most Europeans trust their governments, and voting quality isn't usually an issue - which means auditable encrypted ledgers, public ledger might not be as necessary in Europe as they might be elsewhere; countries where election results are regularly falsified, would likely resist adopting such voting systems due to potential manipulation issues.
Greenland stands out as an exception; its citizens must travel great distances in order to participate. Piekarska acknowledged that some governments aspire to be good but are struggling due to needing access to voting in person. Early movers tend to act quickly when given such incentives - these cases represent exceptional circumstances.
Voters need to have faith in their voting systems - whether manual, electronic, or blockchain-based. Building this trust takes time; electronic voting may become more popular as people get acquainted with using online services.
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Conclusion
Blockchain technology represents an exciting prospect in improving the trustworthiness, security, and traceability of electronic voting. By harnessing its transparency and decentralization benefits, we may overcome some of its issues related to electronic voting.
Transparent elections. While scalability and accessibility pose obstacles to using Blockchain to revolutionize voting processes, case studies demonstrate its power through actual implementations.
