Highly Recommended: How Blockchain Technology Can Improve The Democratic Electoral Process - Nasdaq.com
(nasdaq.com)
Democracy is widely considered to be the form of governance best suited to protect the interests of the populace at large. Currently, over half of the world’s countries are run by democratically elected leaders.
One of the key factors of an effective and functioning democracy is a fair electoral process. Democratic elections are the tools through which citizens are able to choose representatives from a pool of people, usually based on similar political views.
In a functioning democracy, the public has full confidence that the electoral process accurately represents the views of the people. However, in recent times, elections across the world have been marred with doubts. Voter suppression, incorrect tallying, stuffed ballot boxes and hacked voting systems are some of the challenges that are associated with elections today.
These issues are prevalent in developing countries with young democracies but even older, more-established democracies are facing challenges, as was seen in the latest U.S. presidential election, which drew widespread accusations of election irregularities and possible foreign intervention.
Blockchains as a Solution
Blockchain technology was introduced to the public as the underlying technology that powers the digital currency bitcoin. However, as the blockchain technology space grows, more potential use cases for blockchains are emerging.
Blockchains’ potential uses range from payments, data storage, and supply chain management to governance, among many others.When it comes to the electoral process, the blockchain offers a number of advantages. To begin with, the blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger.
What this means is that all records on the ledger are visible to all those within the network. In the voting process, this offers a certain level of security as all records are publicly viewable and verifiable. This means all claims of irregularities can be settled quickly through one look at the blockchain.Vitally, this public access does not compromise on individual privacy.
For instance, on the Bitcoin network, all records are publicly viewable and are attached to a public key which is a series of random numbers and letters. This public key does not reveal the identity of the user. For the purposes of elections, this is essential, as an individual has the right to keep their vote secret while still being able to confirm their vote was correctly lodged.
This is possible with blockchain technology.Additionally, the blockchain is immutable. The records stored on the ledger are unchangeable. In the case of an action on the Bitcoin network, nodes on the network verify the transaction through a complex consensus mechanism.
Once all the nodes are in agreement, this data is recorded on the ledger where it becomes impossible to alter. This is because any changes that are attempted on one node will be immediately recognized as false by the other nodes.For the electoral process, this is an obvious advantage as it means votes stored on a blockchain network cannot be tampered with.
Votes cast for one candidate can, therefore, not be manipulated in favor of another candidate.Moreover, the blockchain has no single point of weakness. Due to its distributed nature, the data written on it is not stored in a central point. This makes the network more secure. An attacker’s attempt to alter the records on the blockchain would fail because all the nodes would have to be changed, which is highly unlikely.
If a few nodes fail then the consensus mechanism would identify and adjust the falsified records leaving the records intact.In terms of voting, this added security that comes with the blockchain would reduce many of the concerns voiced over the hacking of e-voting systems.
Since information can neither be falsified from within the network nor maliciously falsified from without the network, blockchain technology has the potential to positively affect the democratic electoral process.
The Challenges
Though the blockchain offers these upgrades to current electoral systems, it does face significant challenges. Due to its enhanced transparency, the technology may face resistance from people in power who have a vested interest in keeping elections flawed.In addition, the public’s belief in this relatively new technology would have to grow before this becomes a viable choice.
Brian Bartholomew, senior security researcher and senior security expert on the global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab explained to GovTech.com: “One of the biggest issues with voting will be refusal to adopt the new technology.
This is something people don’t want to change. ”Follow My VoteVirginia-based Follow My Vote is one of the leading startups in this blockchain market segment. The company has created an open-source, highly secure, blockchain-based platform for use within the context of government-sponsored elections that it aims to deploy to make elections more transparent and more democratic.
Blockchain technology may not be able to solve all the challenges that modern democracy faces, but it could definitely be used to fix the electoral process, which may, in turn, lead to better and more accurate representation as well as governance in global politics.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.... discover more articles like this on NASDAQ here: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/how-blockchain-technology-can-improve-the-democratic-electoral-process...
One of the key factors of an effective and functioning democracy is a fair electoral process. Democratic elections are the tools through which citizens are able to choose representatives from a pool of people, usually based on similar political views.
In a functioning democracy, the public has full confidence that the electoral process accurately represents the views of the people. However, in recent times, elections across the world have been marred with doubts. Voter suppression, incorrect tallying, stuffed ballot boxes and hacked voting systems are some of the challenges that are associated with elections today.
These issues are prevalent in developing countries with young democracies but even older, more-established democracies are facing challenges, as was seen in the latest U.S. presidential election, which drew widespread accusations of election irregularities and possible foreign intervention.
Blockchains as a Solution
Blockchain technology was introduced to the public as the underlying technology that powers the digital currency bitcoin. However, as the blockchain technology space grows, more potential use cases for blockchains are emerging.
Blockchains’ potential uses range from payments, data storage, and supply chain management to governance, among many others.When it comes to the electoral process, the blockchain offers a number of advantages. To begin with, the blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger.
What this means is that all records on the ledger are visible to all those within the network. In the voting process, this offers a certain level of security as all records are publicly viewable and verifiable. This means all claims of irregularities can be settled quickly through one look at the blockchain.Vitally, this public access does not compromise on individual privacy.
For instance, on the Bitcoin network, all records are publicly viewable and are attached to a public key which is a series of random numbers and letters. This public key does not reveal the identity of the user. For the purposes of elections, this is essential, as an individual has the right to keep their vote secret while still being able to confirm their vote was correctly lodged.
This is possible with blockchain technology.Additionally, the blockchain is immutable. The records stored on the ledger are unchangeable. In the case of an action on the Bitcoin network, nodes on the network verify the transaction through a complex consensus mechanism.
Once all the nodes are in agreement, this data is recorded on the ledger where it becomes impossible to alter. This is because any changes that are attempted on one node will be immediately recognized as false by the other nodes.For the electoral process, this is an obvious advantage as it means votes stored on a blockchain network cannot be tampered with.
Votes cast for one candidate can, therefore, not be manipulated in favor of another candidate.Moreover, the blockchain has no single point of weakness. Due to its distributed nature, the data written on it is not stored in a central point. This makes the network more secure. An attacker’s attempt to alter the records on the blockchain would fail because all the nodes would have to be changed, which is highly unlikely.
If a few nodes fail then the consensus mechanism would identify and adjust the falsified records leaving the records intact.In terms of voting, this added security that comes with the blockchain would reduce many of the concerns voiced over the hacking of e-voting systems.
Since information can neither be falsified from within the network nor maliciously falsified from without the network, blockchain technology has the potential to positively affect the democratic electoral process.
The Challenges
Though the blockchain offers these upgrades to current electoral systems, it does face significant challenges. Due to its enhanced transparency, the technology may face resistance from people in power who have a vested interest in keeping elections flawed.In addition, the public’s belief in this relatively new technology would have to grow before this becomes a viable choice.
Brian Bartholomew, senior security researcher and senior security expert on the global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab explained to GovTech.com: “One of the biggest issues with voting will be refusal to adopt the new technology.
This is something people don’t want to change. ”Follow My VoteVirginia-based Follow My Vote is one of the leading startups in this blockchain market segment. The company has created an open-source, highly secure, blockchain-based platform for use within the context of government-sponsored elections that it aims to deploy to make elections more transparent and more democratic.
Blockchain technology may not be able to solve all the challenges that modern democracy faces, but it could definitely be used to fix the electoral process, which may, in turn, lead to better and more accurate representation as well as governance in global politics.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.... discover more articles like this on NASDAQ here: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/how-blockchain-technology-can-improve-the-democratic-electoral-process...