Blockchain Elections

It has been observed through the years that many elections are plagued by low voter turnout, even for presidential elections. Meanwhile, foul play and other threats to the credibility of elections are an ongoing problem.

Online voting—as an alternative to paper ballots or electronic voting machines—has been implied to increase the active voter count as well as address some of the security issues of elections. However, even with blockchain infrastructure, online voting still poses its fair share of security concerns.

Japan

Tsukaba City of Japan tested blockchain technology in their voting system. Before blockchain, Tsukaba was already a state of the art technological hub and now they are looking forward to be one of the first mainstream adopters of this hyped technology.

Through their Individual Number Card, a 12-digit ID number issued to all citizens of the country, voters were able to participate in the trial which consist of implementations of different social programs. They were able to select which among 13 initiatives they believe deserved financial support ranging from cancer diagnosis equipment to sound navigation programs.

The purpose of the trial was to determine whether blockchian’s democratic and transparent properties would reduce fraud. It received praise from Tsukaba’s mayor Tasuo Ugarashi, calling the procedure minimal and easy beyond his expectations.

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone was said to employ blockchain technology in tallying its elections for presidency last March. Agora Technologies, a Swiss blockchain company, announced in a series of tweets that they had supervised the first blockchain-based election in the country.

However, the National Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (NEC) denied the involvement of blockchain technology during the election.

It turned out that Agora was merely running their separate blockchain election while observing the official voting process for the purpose of showing how future elections could be done on a blockchain. At the very least, they were accredited to test their blockchain voting platform alongside the election, which could open doors to new ways of handling elections.

Switzerland

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have become one of the hottest investment and areas of interest Switzerland’s Crypto Valley, Zug. This small municipality allows Bitcoin for payment of tax and other services.

Recently, the town trialled blockchain voting that involved 72 out of the 240 citizens with access to the online voting system, held between June 25 and July 1. Citizens were tasked to vote on small municipal issues as well as if they think a blockchain-based eID system should be used for referendum votes in the future.

The results were as follows:

3 people indicated that it was not easy to vote digitally,

22 people indicated that they would use blockchain for tax returns or surveys,

19 people indicated that they would pay parking fees with blockchain,

and 3 said they would use blockchain for borrowing library books.

Dieter Miller, Zug’s Communications Chief, called the procedure a success.

West Virginia

West Virginia citizens serving in the armed forces and other citizens living abroad are set to vote via a smartphone app called Voatz in November 2018.

“All that is needed to vote is a compatible Apple or Android mobile device and approved, validated State or Federal ID,” according to officials. This will be the first federal election to use a smartphone for voting.

The app’s biometric authentication and perceived security swayed West Virginia secretary Mac Warner.

The Secure Military Mobile Voting Pilot was conducted during the 2018 Primary election in Mongolia and Harrison Counties.  In this pilot, votes are recorded on a distributed ledger running open source blockchain software.

Unfortunately, not everyone had good things to say about this implementation.

“Mobile voting is a horrific idea,” said Joseph Lorenzo from the Center for Democracy Technology. “It’s internet voting on people’s horribly secured devices, over our horrible networks, to servers that are very difficult to secure without a physical paper record of the vote.

In order to vote, the citizens need to take a selfie, which the app will match with a State ID database using facial recognition technology. Once a ballot is cast, it will be recorded anonymously on the blockchain. Voatz uses a permissioned blockchain that requires voter verification before one can review or input information.

There were a few security criticisms against the app. Security architect Kevin Beaumont tweeted about Voatz’s out-of-date data encryption and authentication services. Marian Schneider, the president of Verified Voting, said the app was not better than any other internet voting system and that the founders made a lot of unjustified security claims. The main issue is that there is no guarantee that the phones and the network won’t be vulnerable as it flows through the internet.

Voatz claims that these criticism are merely false propaganda, however, a trial held in Utah resulted in the company being unable to support high concentration of downloads shortly before polls opened. Voatz dismissed it as a “a valuable learning experience.”

✓ Coin Telegraph
✓ Quartz
✓Hackernoon