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That is why it is crucial to understand that blockchain-based technology is still in its infancy as an electronic voting option. Blockchain technology offers a decentralized node for online voting or electronic voting. Recently distributed ledger technologies such blockchain were used to produce electronic voting systems mainly because of their end-to-end verification advantages . Blockchain is an appealing alternative to conventional electronic voting systems with features such as decentralization, non-repudiation, and security protection.
It also provides fairness by keeping the casted vote encrypted till the ending time of the election. After ending time, the voter can verify their casted vote, ensuring verifiability. To test our protocol, we put it on Ethereum 2.0, a blockchain platform that uses Solidity as a programming language to create smart contracts. The adoption of smart contracts provides a safe means for performing voter verification, ensuring the correctness of voting results, making the counting system public, and protecting against fraudulent activities. It improves in terms of security characteristics and the related cost for the necessary infrastructure.
Problems and Solutions of Developing Online Voting Systems
However, as discussed above, blockchain-based systems are purely decentralized. Even if a hacker compromises one node, he would have to gain a majority https://topbitcoinnews.org/ to bring down the network. Blockchain technology consists of a single mutually agreed upon ledger of transactions shared by millions of nodes.
So, it can be pretty fruitful inside a private network where smart voting devices are connected, verified, and share data during a data-intensive event. Moreover, since Authentichain provides a seamless integration capability, the network can also be extended, and an infinite number of devices can be connected. Therefore, if you look at the application closely, it becomes clearer that, at some places, the use of Authentichain would benefit the outcomes of the blockchain technology. It is a company that has a secure online voting platform cantered on the blockchain with polling box audit ability to see real-time democratic development . This platform enables the voters to cast their votes remotely and safely and vote for their ideal candidate. It can then use their identification to open the ballot box literally and locate their ballot and check that both that it is correct and that the election results have been proven to be accurate mathematically.
Electronic voting has thus not yet been adopted on a national scale, considering all its possible advantages. Today, there is a viable solution to overcome Remote Web Developer Jobs in 2022 the risks and electronic voting, which is blockchain technology. In Figure 4, one can see the main difference between both of the systems.
Let’s imagine we are transported eighteen years into the future, to the presidential elections in the year 2040. Switzerland is another country that’s working on the blockchain voting system project. In reality, most of Zug’s citizens are already really pleased with the e-voting blockchain offers as it makes the process a lot cost-effective and quick.
So now that we have looked at the other side of the coin, it seems fair to say that while blockchain voting offers numerous advantages, the technology – especially the security – probably is not quite where it needs to be just yet. Studies show that implementing regulations that require voters to show ID before they can vote disproportionately affects minorities as well. Unless every eligible person has an acceptable form of ID to vote, using blockchain to host a digital election could exclude poorer voters, which is obviously not acceptable. Other people are concerned about how voters will prove their identity in order to vote on the blockchain. Because while most people have some kind of ID, it’s worth remembering that not everyone has a spare $50 for a driver’s license. In fact, you can view the time and date of your vote almost as soon as you have voted.
In 2014, the city of Moscow’s Active Citizen e-voting platform was created to let Muscovites have a say in non-political municipal decisions, and in 2017 it used the Ethereum blockchain for a series of polls. The largest of these tapped 220,000 citizens and the voting results were publicly auditable. On the other hand, if one can “weave self-sovereign identity into the core protocol,” as Concordium, a layer-1 public blockchain, aspires to do, that “may be just the right technology to power public elections,” said Kjelstrøm.
Associated Data
You may never know that hacker installs malware or performs clickjacking attacks to steal or negate your vote or simply attacks central server. As widespread cases of voter fraud in the US, UK, and many of the world’s oldest democracies dominate headlines, the need for a trust-less and secure voting mechanism has never been greater. Blockchain technology can correct several flaws in the current system and engender greater confidence in the system. We must note, though, the scalability of blockchain platforms is being improved through different methods. For example, permissioned blockchain systems use a lower number of validating nodes to improve transaction speed. But blockchain may just be the thing we need to protect online elections from external manipulation.
Homomorphic encryption can be used to obtain various properties necessary in an online voting system; with regards to privacy, it is used so that only the sum of all the choices is decrypted, and never each voter’s choice by itself. Using homomorphic encryption for privacy implies that decryption is performed by several authorities so that no one can obtain the decryption key; otherwise, privacy will be violated . A recent study revealed that the traditional voting process was not wholly hygienic, posing several questions, including fairness, equality, and people’s will, was not adequately quantified and understood in the form of government . Apart from mainstream voting, Horizon State also caters to the use case of a transparent feedback management system.
Blockchain In Voting: Issues with Voting System
Service provider Luxoft Harding, Inc., in partnership with the City of Zug and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences of Switzerland . To drive government adoption of blockchain-based services, Luxoft announces its commitment to open source this platform and establishes a Government Alliance Blockchain to promote blockchain use in public institutions. Accuracy, also called correctness, demands that the declared results correspond precisely to the election results. It means that nobody can change the voting of other citizens, that the final tally includes all legitimate votes , and that there is no definitive tally of invalid ballots. Blockchain creates a series of blocks replicated on a peer-to-peer network.
Proof-of-History, or PoH, is a novel technique used in blockchain systems to ensure that historical data is accurate and hasn’t been tampered with. Even though this is unlikely, it is still possible, because while blockchains are considerably more secure than most centralized databases, they are far from perfect. Going back to the UK for a second, if the British government decided to implement a blockchain-based voting system and it cost, say, $350 million to build, they would make their money back in two election cycles. And that’s without accounting for any local election costs, opinion polls, or referendums. Election results are commonly dragged into disrepute by the losing party, the most recent and obvious example being the US Presidential election of 2020.
- During the 2016 presidential election, Votem was used to facilitate voter registration as well as absentee ballot requests and delivery in Montana and Washington, D.C.
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- However, large segments of voters, such as those living in remote areas, expatriates, people with physical disabilities and other marginalized communities, can face obstacles to voting in person and already vote remotely.
- Let’s go through step by step of a basic blockchain-based voting system.
- And if the number of registrations in a jurisdiction seems abnormal, it can be addressed appropriately.
As the number of votes cast in real life increases, citizens are becoming more aware of the significance of the electoral system . The voting system is the method through which judges judge who will represent in political and corporate governance. The efficacy of such a procedure is determined mainly by the level of faith that people have in the election process. The creation of legislative institutions to represent the desire of the people is a well-known tendency. Over the years, the vote has become the primary resource to express the will of the citizens by selecting from the choices they made .
Real-World Examples of Blockchain-Based Voting Systems
For example, blockchain can offer its decentralized platform to cast a vote. Here, there will be no centralized authority who can tamper with the results. In reality, blockchain-based voting systems offer a ton of applications.
More so, every single voter will get their very own voter identity verified. As the technology behind these voting platforms can’t fend off all the cyber-attacks, many bad players can hack into the system and alter the results jeopardizing the integrity of the vote. In reality, it will help the citizens have more faith in the system, and they will start to trust the government. Although most of our modern life is digitized at present, the elections are still using paper-based ballots. However, with the new century, experts saw great promise in e-voting that can speed up the process of digitization in this sector. How long will it be, then, before the first national election with blockchain voting?
The company has also built-in additional capabilities that allow for people to voice their opinions on various topics, enhancing the “voice of the people” approach of the app. Jack Tatar has more than three decades worth of experience in the business world, focusing primarily on investing, cryptocurrency, and aiding the growth of technology companies. Before writing and editing about cryptocurrency and investing, Jack worked for Merrill Lynch as a licensed financial advisor and marketing executive. He is also recognized as a published author, specifically for his book, “What’s the Deal with Bitcoins?,” which is one of the first-ever books on cryptocurrency. Lot of paperwork involved, hence less eco-friendly and time-consuming.
Since several actors are involved in a blockchain-based voting system, they need to relay messages in real-time. If a large-scale election occurs, the actors involved need to ensure communication can be swift without external factors interfering. There are several messaging applications and even protocols used in this scenario, the way most of them thwart user’s privacy needs to be evaluated quite skeptically. It ensures that communication between members of the network can happen swiftly without revealing their identities. This may seem insignificant to some people, but its practicality is quite reasonable. Since current voting systems don’t suffice to security needs of modern generation, there is a need to build a system that leverages security, convenience, and trust involved in voting process.
In traditional voting systems, we have a central authority to cast a vote. If someone wants to modify or change the record, they can do it quickly; no one knows how to verify that record. One does not have the central authority; the data are stored in multiple nodes.
In reality, the issue with ballot papers is that it’s highly vulnerable. Any other party can take advantage of that and increase their votes significantly. Therefore, blockchain can serve as the primary basis of developing the new voting system that can drive more voter turnouts and make democracy strong again.
With the rise of the world’s favorite cryptocurrency, awareness of the mysterious and unique technology behind it also grew. Developers who recognized the value of blockchain are now racing to create new use cases for it and put their ideas into production. Pawlak M., Poniszewska-Marańda A., Kryvinska N. Towards the intelligent agents for blockchain e-voting system. Hjálmarsson F.Þ., Hreiðarsson G.K., Hamdaqa M., Hjálmtýsson G. Blockchain-based e-voting system; Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing ; San Francisco, CA, USA. Zhang L., Peng M., Wang W., Jin Z., Su Y., Chen H. Secure and efficient data storage and sharing scheme for blockchain—Based mobile—Edge computing.
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