Election tally: Does blockchain beat the ballot box?

Blockchain technology in online voting "may increase participation rates and recover the public's trust in the democratic process," according to a New York Times op-ed. Online voting enabled by blockchain technology has the potential to increase voter turnout and restore public confidence in the election process and democracy. It seems more pertinent now when substantial segments of the global population question the legitimacy of elections everywhere, from the United States to Brazil.

Ensuring trust is critical

If an electronic voting system is going to take over from a manual one, it must deal with the same problems. Allow listing ensures that only qualified voters participate; ID verification, anonymity, and security are all options for in-person voting.?

Given that "every transaction written can never be removed," immutability is built into a public, decentralized blockchain by design. Concordium's chief technology officer, Kre Kjelstrm, told Cointelegraph that trust is essential for any voting system, and trust necessitates several attributes, any one of which can be difficult depending on the circumstances.?

Safelisting ensures that only eligible voters take part in an election; identification ensures that voters are who they say they are; anonymity guarantees that a voter's vote cannot be traced back to them; security guarantees that polling places are safe and secure; and immutability guarantees that votes cast cannot be changed.?

What are the differences between private and open blockchains?

An economics professor has warned that a permissionless system for public elections is impossible since voter information is private and we cannot trust all third parties. The second issue is data entry at the preferred voting place. She claims it is impossible to safeguard against voter intimidation before an electronic ballot is submitted.

Technical limitations?

Moscow's Active Citizen e-voting platform was launched in 2014 to give residents a voice in non-political municipal matters. In 2017, it conducted a series of surveys on the Ethereum blockchain. The largest polled over 220,000 people, and anyone could verify the findings. Certain scaling restrictions were exposed.

A maximum of about 1,000 transactions per minute [16.7 transactions per second] were processed on the proof-of-work platform. Professor Nir Kshetri of the Bryan School of Business and Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro said that if a larger percentage of Moscow's 12 million citizens voted, the platform would struggle to handle the number. Since this PoW version of the Ethereum blockchain "was not sufficient to conduct national elections," Kshetri and others came to that conclusion. However, in 2023, when Ethereum 2.0 introduced sharding, the situation could change.

Usability is critical

Before blockchain voting is widely adopted, problems beyond technological ones must be resolved. Also, there are societal and political obstacles to overcome. Since blockchain technology is in the initial development phase, people are a bit hesitant about its mainstream applications.

The technology is available, Piekarska said. We can act immediately. I mean, nowadays, independent decentralized organizations are ruled via online voting, and they control trillions of dollars.?