Blockchain Based Voting Could Save Democracy

In many countries, security at the polls has become an important issue. Some people have said that blockchain voting systems could stop election fraud and bring democracy back to life. In this article, we look at how blockchain voting could work, first by looking at what’s wrong with the old ways of voting. Second, learn more about blockchain technology and how it can help with voting. Third, We will look at the work that is being done right now on blockchain voting and suggest that the most realistic way to use blockchain voting in political elections is to use a mix of new technology and traditional voting methods. In the end, we will talk about some of the problems that could stop blockchain voting from becoming widely used. In particular, about why some governments might not be in a hurry to make such a change.

You can contact a Blockchain technology company to help you with the Blockchain based voting system.

Current Voting Systems Threaten Democracy

Democracy is a way of running a country in which the people who are governed take part in the process, usually by electing representatives. For democracy to work, there must be a way to vote that is fair and safe. Traditional paper ballot voting is easy to use and doesn’t cost much money, but it has two big problems in modern nations:

It can’t be grown. Voting on paper works best for smaller, local governments. When the method is used on a large scale, it is very hard to make sure if it is accurate.

Electronic voting machines are much less safe than paper ballots, so they are often used with paper ballots. Each machine has multiple security holes that make it easier to change the results of an election.

Some people say that blockchain technology could solve these issues. First, because it can be used on a large scale, and second because it can’t be changed. Is that right? Could blockchain technology provide a way to vote that is safe and reliable enough for modern democracies?

How Blockchain Works to Make Voting Possible

For blockchain voting to make sense, you need to know how the blockchain works. Some people have said that making the blockchain is just as important as making the Internet. At its core, a blockchain is a distributed database that keeps a secure, growing log of activity records called “blocks”:

“Imagine a spreadsheet copied thousands of times on different computers in a network. Then imagine that this network is set up to update this spreadsheet on a regular basis, and you have a basic idea of what the blockchain is.

This ledger is run by a network of nodes. The nodes are computers that are connected to a network and have agreed to check whether online transactions are legitimate. When a node checks if a transaction is valid, it adds it to a group of transactions called a “block.” The transactions on the network are public, which means that anyone can check to see if they are valid. The blocks of valid transactions are added to the database one after the other, which is how the name “blockchain” came about. The ledger is kept by the network nodes as a whole. This method of storing verified data in many places is very flexible. Almost any kind of information can be stored. There are transactions in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, but there are also health records, land titles, records of the supply chain, copyright and royalties, and votes.

Blockchain is Transparent and Incorruptible

To understand why blockchain voting could be a good choice for political elections, you need to learn more about the technology. A hash function is used to mark the first block of a chain when it is added. As the second block is added, it is also marked with a hash function that uses part of the hash of the first block. When a node (a computer) adds a new block to the chain and any of the information in the previous blocks has been changed (i.e., the records in the ledger have been changed), the hash function of that block also needs to be changed. When the changed block is added to the blockchain, however, all the other nodes in the network can see that its hash function is different. This means that a change must have been made on a previous block, or the node’s update will be rejected.

So, blockchain technology makes it possible to store data in a way that is open and can’t be changed. It is decentralised because it can’t be run by just one person or group, and it doesn’t have a single point of failure. This basic feature of blockchain technology is what makes it secure and hard to change. It could also be used to hold elections.

Existing Blockchain Voting Systems

Several different voting systems based on blockchain have been thought of.

Follow My Vote:

Follow My Vote is working on a blockchain voting system that will let people vote from a distance. A “voting booth” app must be put on the voter’s computer, tablet, or phone. The voter must also show legal documents to a “Identity Identifier” to prove that he or she is who they say they are. This “Identity Identifier” should have been approved by the group running the election. Once a voter’s identity has been confirmed, he or she can ask for a ballot and vote electronically. The Follow My Vote system is interesting because voters can change their minds right up until the end of election day. The most recent vote counts once the polls are closed.

Follow My Vote’s way of doing things could be hard for governments to use in political elections. Using electronic voting makes it hard to prove who you are. Malware, etc., could easily get into the computers of voters. More likely to happen is voter intimidation from far away. Since there is no paper trail, auditing is harder when people vote from far away. Even someone with few resources could launch a Denial of Service attack on a whole neighbourhood, which is very scary.

In short, there are major security problems with using e-voting for political elections. But it might work for private elections where less is at stake.

VoteBook

Votebook is another project that wants to use blockchain to make voting easier. Its method is very different from Follow My Vote, though. The difference comes from how people vote. Electronic voting is not a part of the Votebook system. It uses voting machines that look like traditional voting booths, but they are actually computers that act as nodes on a blockchain.

On election day, Votebook machines keep track of votes as they are cast and put them into groups. The blocks are sent out to the network, and every other node uses a public key to decrypt the hash and check if its data is still valid. The nodes that got the message then check the database for the previous block’s hash to make sure it wasn’t changed. A paper audit trail is also made by the network.

With the Votebook system, voting is very similar to how it is now, but it is much more secure and reliable because it uses blockchain to keep track of votes.

VoteWatcher

Blockchain Technologies Corporation has a division called VoteWatcher (BTC). It says that it is a blockchain voting system that can be used for all kinds of voting, not just government elections. VoteWatcher has been used in eleven different voting events so far, and 5,000 votes have been counted with it.

With VoteWatcher, voting is done in person with a paper ballot, just like it used to be. But the ballot has three QR codes: one is a blockchain address, one is an ID for the ballot, and the third is an ID for the election. Once a voter marks the ballot, it is scanned by a machine on-site, which sends the vote to the correct candidate’s unique address (like a bitcoin wallet) on an offline blockchain. Every ballot is saved as a picture in the machines. Once the election is over, all of the machines are connected on a network and start adding the votes to a final public blockchain. With this method, anyone can use a blockchain explorer to see in real time how many votes each candidate got.

So, VoteWatcher uses blockchain technology to make a public auditing system with paper ballots as a backup.

A Blended Approach

Based on the three examples above, it seems that the best way to hold political elections is with a voting system that uses both paper ballots and a blockchain to record and distribute votes. E-voting that is done remotely can’t be kept safe. Most voting security experts prefer a paper-based audit trail because of this.

Jeremy Clark, a professor at Concordia University, has proposed a mixed system that would keep using paper ballots for voting but also add a blockchain-based system for auditing and counting votes. Under Clark’s plan, people would sign up to vote the same way they do now. They would also vote the same way in physical voting booths that were locked. But if they did that, they would use paper ballots with three QR codes like the ones that VoteWatcher made. After the voting period is over, all of the digital information will be saved on a DVD or flash drive before the booths or machines are put online. In case an audit is needed, the DVD or flash drive and the paper ballots would be kept in a safe place. Once connected to the Internet, each computer would become a “node” in a “permissioned blockchain,” which is similar to what Votebook suggested.

So, Clark’s system takes ideas from both VoteWatcher and Votebook to make a very safe way to vote that could be used in political elections. It uses blockchain technology to scale up traditional on-site voting. This reduces the security risks that come with e-voting and creates a transparent, unchangeable voting record that can be audited and counted both digitally and on paper.

The government might not want voting to be more secure.

Even though blockchain voting is a more secure technology, it is not easy to use for political elections. First, blockchain voting needs a strong, reliable internet infrastructure and access to machines that are expensive and use a lot of energy. Not many countries around the world can meet these requirements. Second, some governments might not want fair and safe elections because they might lose the power to use the flaws in their current voting systems to their advantage. So, for blockchain voting to become more common, governments around the world must be willing to make improvements to the way democracy works in their own countries.

Still, there are signs that blockchain voting is already being used in politics. In 2014, the Danish Liberal Alliance used a blockchain voting system to hold an internal vote. This was the first time blockchain voting was used. At least two Libertarian Party Conventions in the U.S. used the VoteWatcher system to count votes. In 2016, blockchain companies from Ukraine and the United States signed an agreement to work together on a blockchain voting system. In 2016, Russia also said it had made a proxy voting system based on blockchain. Lastly, the Australian Flux party has pushed for Australian elections to use blockchain voting.

Voting at the local level with blockchain

Based on the problems with traditional voting methods and the different blockchain voting solutions that have been made so far, it seems like the most practical way to use blockchain voting would be to keep using paper ballots and voting in person, but use blockchain technology to count the votes and keep a secure record of them.

But there are political problems with blockchain voting as well as technical ones. It could be said that a country’s political system is the most important factor in its economic growth. The best interests of the people are at the heart of a political system that is open to everyone. On the other hand, a “exclusive” political system is based on the needs of a small group of powerful people. Fair and untampered elections may be the best way for a political system to be open to everyone. A blockchain voting system can make this better. But this is exactly why more exclusive political systems might not want to use blockchain voting. The government has a stake in how things are going right now.

One way to deal with this situation might be to focus on putting blockchain voting into place at the local level, where it will be easier to do. If these kinds of efforts are successful in many places in the same country, it could be that the political system as a whole move toward being more open.

Author Bio:

This is Aryan, I am a professional SEO Expert & Write for us technology blog and submit a guest post on different platforms- Technoohub provides a good opportunity for content writers to submit guest posts on our website. We frequently highlight and tend to showcase guests.