Blockchain can prevent voter fraud, but it’s not a perfect solution at this stage

Cybersecurity has been one of the hottest topics in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the Nov. 8 showdown just around the corner. Concerns are growing that domestic or foreign actors could try to distort the results. While many believe that all forms of electronic voting should be abandoned and a return to offline paper systems should be made — especially now that electronic voting machines have proven to be so vulnerable — others are hoping for new technologies to make voting more secure. In particular, blockchain technology is attracting a lot of attention.

Because blockchain is a distributed transaction ledger—in other words, the information recorded in this ledger is not stored once in one system, but is stored multiple times by many independent nodes—votes can be stored in an immutable and tamper-proof way. Once a vote is securely protected using a hashing algorithm and stored by thousands, millions, or someday billions of nodes, it is theoretically impossible to modify the vote because it would require enormous resources and computing power that a single party cannot muster.

Although blockchain was originally designed for currency transactions, its characteristics make it an ideal solution for supporting voting systems and registering votes. The blockchain's ability to prevent duplicate payments of digital currency can also ensure that duplicate votes will not occur, and its transparency and openness also make it auditable.

By analogy with digital currency, blockchain voting will issue each voter a 'wallet' (a user certificate) and a 'coin' (a voting opportunity), and voters can transfer their 'coins' to the wallet of the candidate of their choice to cast their vote. Voters can only spend their 'coins' - or cast their votes - once, but they can flexibly change their votes before the deadline.

As for security, the decentralized nature of blockchain and the absence of a single point of failure make it very resistant to DOS attacks and other threats that typically target client or server architectures.

Additionally, blockchain-based voting can eliminate some of the forgeries that can occur with paper voting systems, such as replacing ballot boxes with fraudulent means.

Who are the blockchain voting players?

There are already many blockchains in existence, many of which can be used as voting service platforms. Follow My Vote is a startup in Virginia that wants to help people switch to blockchain voting. The company's platform is based on the Bitshares blockchain, which enables voters to vote online using a unique voter ID and private key; voters can use a camera and a government-issued ID to verify their identity. The system uses cryptography and end-to-end encryption to keep votes anonymous and immutable. The publicly available ledger will allow everyone to directly follow the final voting results. At any stage in the voting process, voters will be able to verify their ballots and ensure that they have not been modified.

Follow My Vote will test its platform through a mock online election that will be held in parallel with the US presidential election.

Another New York blockchain technology company is taking a hybrid approach of a blockchain voting system and a paper voting system, using QR codes to ensure that each vote is cast only once.

However, we are seeing more and more progress in blockchain voting outside of the United States. For example, the government-owned Australia Post is creating a location-independent and tamper-proof voting system that is trackable and anonymous and can be proven to be resistant to denial of service (DoS) attacks. The system allows users to vote through secure digital access keys, and the system also issues 'voting points' that users can pay to vote. The system protects voter privacy through encryption and digital signatures.

The vote counting process is to compile the results on the blockchain.

The service is currently being trialled at corporate and community elections, but project leaders hope it will one day be able to handle full parliamentary elections.

Russia’s Central Securities Depository NSD is also venturing into the blockchain space with a fully functional electronic proxy voting system. The ledger can be used to send and calculate voting instructions. The technology has been used for bondholder meetings and will be expanded to other areas of NSD’s business.

Another country looking to use blockchain technology for voting is Estonia. Estonia has become a leader in blockchain through its e-residency program, an electronic identity platform that enables foreigners to operate businesses and access government services in Estonia. The country is complementing previous work with a blockchain-based electronic voting system that allows Estonian citizens and e-residents to securely vote at company shareholder meetings.

Blockchain voting also made its debut in the Middle East via the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, which this week announced it would begin using blockchain to enable shareholders to participate and observe voting at its annual meeting.

In Denmark, the Liberal Alliance political party chose to use blockchain for internal voting in 2014.

There are other blockchain voting efforts underway in other parts of the world. For example, Ukraine’s e-Vox offers a blockchain-based voting service.

Blockchain is not a perfect solution yet

Although a promising technology, blockchain is not foolproof and has a long way to go and many hurdles to overcome before it can realize its full potential.

For example, although the blockchain itself is very secure, the private keys and passwords used to ensure the security of accounts (wallets) will become a vulnerability if they are lost or fall into the wrong hands.

Ease of use is also a point of contention. Voting must be accessible nationwide, not just to a tech-savvy minority, so election technology must be intuitive and easy to use. The concept of blockchain and private keys may not be to everyone’s taste just yet.

And the involvement of the government in the process of setting up blockchain voting is also a problem. The premise of blockchain is that there is no third-party agency involved, and every user is anonymous. Trying to link this technology with voting, then the identity needs to be confirmed, which may cause fundamental problems.

If these obstacles can be overcome, perhaps we will eventually turn to blockchain voting, just as many of us have turned to online banking and mobile payments, even though we were all very worried about them 20 years ago.

What is certain is that the electoral process is lagging far behind technological advancement. Sticking to paper elections is not a strategic and long-term answer to cyber threats to elections. Will blockchain develop into the answer for elections?