Blockchain in Voting
In any country, Democratic voting is the most important event that allows its citizens to exercise their power by voting and electing their representatives. And to protect this right of the citizens, conducting fair elections is the basic prerequisite for any country.
In a democratic system, every vote counts. But still, many adult citizens don’t go to cast their votes on the Election day. They may be out of town or maybe they feel that the voting centre is too far.
Some might not go because they feel and believe that their vote doesn’t count because of the unfair election results.Even the responsible citizens who go to vote have to stand in long queues to cast their votes.
In the current system, voting is generally done either by writing your opinion on the paper or by electronic voting machines.
Replacement of this traditional system is necessary to limit the voting frauds and to make the voting as well as the counting process more transparent.
Further, a system is required that makes voting convenient for the voters, a system that minimizes the cost of conducting elections as money spent on the national elections is huge. A system which allows us to vote even when we are travelling abroad or are not present in our home state.
We are a society that prefers to live online right from ordering food, to booking cabs, to shopping our daily groceries and even finding our life partners. Then why can’t we cast our votes and select our representatives with a few taps or clicks on a screen? Why can’t there be a system where we can vote online through the comfort of our homes.
Though many online voting solutions have been proposed in the past we don’t see them in reality.
There are a number of challenges that such online e-voting or remote voting system faces. Let us first have a look at these challenges:
- Remote electronic voting requires stringent security measures for the voting process because in this case, the risk of large-scale manipulation is simply too high.
- There is a risk of hacking activities by hackers who could directly infect and hack the servers
- Even the cases of coerced or influenced voting can be in large numbers
- There is no way till date to verify if your vote has been counted in this online voting system
Enter Blockchain technology. Blockchain Voting is an effective means to conduct fair elections. Blockchain can help to implement an electronic voting system that is immutable, transparent, and cannot be hacked into in order to change the results.
- The first and foremost step in this blockchain-based voting system will be to validate the identity of the voter. It is very important to ensure that someone’s identity is not being faked because every vote counts and is equally important.
- To keep a check on this, a voter will be required to download the remote voting booth on his mobile, laptop, or any other smart device.
- After that, he will be required to submit his identity information, which will then get verified by the organisation conducting these elections.
- The organization will refer to their database of the registered voters and verify if the person is registered on their database, and is eligible to vote.
- Then all the information of the voter will be securely added to the voter blockchain. After his identity is verified, a smart contract will be executed, which will issue a ballot to the voter so that he can vote and submit it to the ballot box.
Additionally, a Blockchain-based voting system will ensure that a user does not vote multiple times.
In this Blockchain system, when a voter votes the polling stations will consult the voter blockchain to ensure that the voter has not already used up his vote. If the user’s vote is found to be valid, the polling station will accept his vote and in case the vote is found to be invalid his vote will get rejected by the polling station. Thus tackling the issue of multiple voting by a single person.
After voting, every vote will become a transaction and will get stored in the blockchain after encryption. And once the vote is casted, it can not be modified because of the innate immutable characteristic of blockchain. The voter will even be provided with the option to print the receipt as proof of casting the vote. Further through blockchain, the voter will be able to verify that his vote has been casted and counted.
The voter can even audit each ballot in the ballot box and confirm if the election results are accurate while retaining the privacy of other voters.
In the current scenario, it takes days for the election results to come out and the declared election results are prone to human error.
But with blockchain, the election results can be declared immediately after the voting is over without any chances of human error.
Blockchain technology will provide the required flexibility to a voter to login and vote from any part of the world. He just needs a phone and an active internet connection. This would encourage more and more people to vote and become a part of the democratic world, where the opinion of every person matters. By this system, the valuable votes won’t get wasted.
And last but not the least, this is definitely a cheaper method as compared to the current way of conducting elections.
Many countries and states are already running a pilot to adopt Blockchain technology for a secure voting system. For example, West Virginia, Sierra Leone tested mobile voting through blockchain in 2018.
Apart from state elections, this blockchain-based voting system could also facilitate voting processes inside private companies, organizations, and college elections. The technology can even be used to facilitate the process of voting in reality shows like talent hunt shows where the vote of the viewers matters the most.
If you liked this article and want to know more about Blockchain, NFTs, Metaverse, and their applications, click the below link.
Happy learning!
