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The losing side claims that ballot boxes were stuffed with fraudulent votes for the other guy, or that the votes for their candidate were destroyed by devious members of their opposition. So now that you’re caught up on what blockchains are, let’s explore how a blockchain-based voting system could work in the real world. In the end, blockchain in voting can be a blessing if the world treats it like that.
Historically it was difficult for them to vote because they had to mail in a request for an absentee ballot, wait to receive it by mail, and mail the voted ballot back, incurring at least three postal delays. Often the blank absentee ballots were not available in time for overseas and military voters to meet the Election Day deadline. It used to be widely believed that Internet voting would be the best way to resolve these problems. There is no ironclad defense against DoS attacks, and nothing prevents such an attack from disrupting a blockchain voting system.
And is there a chance that the next US presidential election will use a blockchain voting system? A trial with only 144 blockchain votes probably won’t convince many governments to start rolling out such voting systems. However, given that no security breaches were found, and the feedback from voters was consistently positive, it seems that blockchain voting isn’t just a pipe dream. Another application of blockchain in voting is the voter Id verification process.
With the help of ECC, it ensures that the optimum level of transparency is maintained, but each network member enjoys individual secrecy. Since Bitcoin’s underlying technology was first suggested in 2008, many saw in it the perfect platform for internet voting. In 2018, researchers at Scytl published a study analyzing seven blockchain-based internet voting systems against international electoral standards. They concluded that as “a distributed audit layer, it is expected that blockchain technology will provide more transparency to such services, while preventing that a simple agent can tamper with electoral electronic data”. It’s not only financial transactions that work with blockchain, but any type of data transmission.
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This kind of system infrastructure is extremely useful for voting because a vote is a small piece of high-value data. Out of necessity, modern voting systems are largely stuck in the last century, and those that want to vote must leave their homes and submit paper ballots to a local authority. Some have tried, but it has proven difficult to put faith in the results due to large gaps in security.
In reality, there is already a few blockchain voting app in development that can deal with most of the issues. With election integrity under assault in the United States and elsewhere, is blockchain technology part of the solution? Last year, India was one of the first developing nations to experiment with blockchain technology for secure e-voting procedures. The exercise was held in the Telangana region and saw users vote on the blockchain using an e-voting application commissioned by the Telangana State Election Commission . Using their mobile devices, voters in the Moscow and Nizhniy Novgorod regions could cast votes in the nationwide amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The pilot was executed on the Exonum blockchain and employed several features, including an anonymizer and mixer to protect the secrecy of votes and anonymity of voters.
In this era of ubiquitous cyber threats, it is dangerous and irresponsible to introduce online voting in the U.S. — or in any other democratic nation — with or without blockchains. Online voting includes email, fax, and web-based voting, as well a voting via apps from mobile devices. In a blockchain-based election the blockchain serves as a distributed ballot box holding the voted ballots, though it is sometimes used to hold other information as well. The government has developed a blockchain-based voting system that allows all citizens to vote in any election, from local council votes all the way up to national ones, from an app that works on all smartphones. Your phone buzzes with an alert reminding you to vote in today’s presidential elections, so you log in to the app and request a digital ballot.
Since 2013, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has let music fans vote for who they think should be the next act to be inducted into the hall. Blockchain votes could also be auditable, so impartial organizations and regulators could check the legitimacy of any election without needing to count each vote alongside the official vote counters. Blockchains can be either public, where anyone can add blocks to the chain, or private, where only authorized users can add data to the chain. In many cases, the application will link your device’s IP or your phone’s biometric to the account and delete all your visible information. It will also check your national identification and verify if you are eligible for that. As you can see, the voting system may include technology in many countries.
1. Core Components of Blockchain Architecture
In this way, any manipulation of the logs could be detected and collusion are prevented due to the distributed nature of the blockchain. Many popular blockchain platforms, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, can process around a dozen transactions per second. Such low throughput would affect their usefulness in an election, where hundreds, if not thousands, of voters need to cast their votes at the same time.
- The OVN is unable to stop fraudulent miners from corrupting the system.
- In time, it would also help more people engage with politics, and feel as if their opinion matters, which would probably lead to higher voter turnouts and a stronger democracy.
- The blockchain is a distributed, unalterable, and public ledger of transactions.
- One does not have the central authority; the data are stored in multiple nodes.
The company’s voting platform uses a three-step voter authentication process, including fingerprint recognition, a live photo and a one-phone, one-vote system. Blockchain works to be inherently secure and ensure original information is unchangeable, providing a single-source-of-truth and acting as a tracking method for any data recorded. When applied to voting, this could mean the opportunity for unaltered votes, voting transparency, increased online accessibility and more organized voting operations.
Poor implementation of new systems can – as many elections have shown – undermine public confidence and subvert the legitimacy of the winner. Losers at the ballot box often attack the system by blaming technology. Independent watch-dogs could track the edits being made to voter records on a blockchain in real time, watching for purges or suspicious activities. Voter accessibility challenges are not just confined to physical obstacles. Malicious actors can also obstruct voters from election participation by manipulating voter registration information, undermining the legitimacy and trust in an electoral outcome.
The criterion also referred to as desirability makes it possible to assess whether or not a single voter engaged in the election . After the vote is cast, no one should be in a position to attach the identity of a voter with its vote. Computer secrecy is a fragile type of confidentiality, which means that the voting relationship remains hidden for an extended period as long as the current rate continues to change with computer power and new techniques . Throughout the polling process, the voting turnout must be secured from external interpretation. Any correlation between registered votes and voter identities inside the electoral structure shall be unknown .
Blockchain Voting In India: Illusion Or Reality?
The aforementioned are some examples of how a blockchain-based voting system might work in practice. Although these experiments are limited in nature, they provide some proof of blockchain’s usefulness for voting. As a system built on citizen participation, democracy may be destroyed if individuals refuse to vote because they don’t trust the election process. Election authorities must consult with key stakeholders to define the advantages and risks posed by a new technology.
In some cases, citizens may be concerned about their ballot being altered, discarded, or replaced after they cast their votes either in-person or via the mail. Ethereum is a blockchain-based software platform with the native 10 Top Cloud Security Companies coin, ether. Ethereum smart contracts support a variety of distributed apps across the crypto ecosystem. Khan K.M., Arshad J., Khan M.M. Investigating performance constraints for blockchain based secure e-voting system.
It means that before the count is released, no one can find out the details. It avoids acts such as manipulating late voters’ decisions by issuing a prediction or offering a significant yet unfair benefit to certain persons or groups as to be the first to know . While anonymous privacy ensures electoral fraud safeguards, no method can be assured that votes are placed under bribery or election rigging in any way.
All political factions, civil society leaders, members of marginalized communities, and other constituent groups should perceive the new technology as fair among different constituent groups. Transparent and competitive technology procurement processes are particularly critical in an election context where even the perception of illegitimacy could undermine confidence in elections. Voters then have the ability to verify that their ballot was cast according to their vote. It also provides a way for independent monitors to verify whether the tally of individual votes matches official results. Experts believe that blockchain voting is still in its early stages, and there are many challenges that need to be addressed before it can be implemented nationwide. De Faveri C., Moreira A., Araújo J., Amaral V. Towards security modeling of e-voting systems; Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE 24th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops ; Beijing, China.
Horizon State uses a blockchain-powered system to run elections for unions, corporations, businesses, political parties, and even governments. Each voter receives a Decision Token ($HST), which they can use to vote on various issues. Follomyvote is one of the many startups building blockchain-powered systems to aid electronic voting. The system works like any other e-voting system, but with the added advantage of blockchain technology. The use of private keys to generate digital signatures preserves the integrity of on-chain transactions.
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The use cases implemented as the basis for bringing blockchain technology to the mass voting system are pretty robust and fault-tolerant, but as of yet, the same extent of resilience cannot be attained in the voting niche. For instance, in the case of a digital bank, if your credit card is lost, you can immediately log in and get it disabled. Apart from the mainstream security practices followed by blockchain-based voting systems, it is essential to discuss the technology’s core benefits. The single-owner strategy is thus arguably more vulnerable to both insider and outsider cyberattacks than the multi-owner chain, while offering little if any advantage over a conventional database. A similar type of threat is present when a blockchain is used in elections.
Anything can be bribed or somewhat “motivated” to malfunction in the traditional world, let it be a machine or an individual. This potential issue renders them doubtful when most sensitive use cases, such as voting, are discussed. With the help of blockchain’s provenance, we can always count the votes in real time and revert to an election result at a later date without having an ounce of doubt about its legitimacy. However, the masses always stress that they should have the confidence that their opinion, expressed via votes, would be respected, and it should always be transparent, despite the “level” of elections. Therefore, if we read the previous section in conjunction with this demand, it is pretty clear that their demands can be met with the help of Elliptic Curve technology.
Blockchain technology fixed shortcomings in today’s method in elections made the polling mechanism clear and accessible, stopped illegal voting, strengthened the data protection, and checked the outcome of the polling. The implementation https://cryptonews.wiki/ of the electronic voting method in blockchain is very significant . However, electronic voting carries significant risks such as if an electronic voting system is compromised, all cast votes can probably be manipulated and misused.
