Blockchain advocates envision perfect elections at Liberal Party convention

Crazy Review : Blockchain Technologies Corp. is a blockchain technology company that provides ballot management services for presidential primaries in multiple states. The company's CEO Nick Spanos introduced blockchain technology at various election venues and drew a blueprint for a blockchain-based voting system for politicians. The reliability of U.S. elections has always been a headache, and most politicians have expressed distrust of existing electronic voting equipment.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Last Saturday, supporters of small government gathered at the Libertarian Party's election rally in a nondescript Ukrainian restaurant on Manhattan's East Side, from glamorous businessmen to scruffy businessmen trying to make ends meet to vote for the presidential candidates who will attend the Libertarian Party gathering in Orlando next month.

But Nick Spanos came here for another purpose. The former Ron Paul campaign adviser is now the CEO of Blockchain Technologies Corp, a company that hopes to replace the US voting system with Bitcoin-derived blockchain technology, and is the host of the voting event at this conference. Although the conference was small, with only a few dozen voters, it was a major opportunity for Spanos to showcase his vision for future voting management, a system that records votes and is auditable in a blockchain database.

Around 1 p.m., word spread that antivirus software pioneer John McAfee had returned from exile in Guatemala and was at the convention to run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. Spanos didn’t miss the opportunity to explain to the aspiring politician.

Nick Spanos attended the meeting for another purpose

But McAfee sternly ended Spanos's mission quickly, leaving him to face greater difficulties. He told me:

"The problem is not about technology, it's about government power. There is a system in the United States that controls elections. We can talk about technology all day long, but unless that can take away control of the existing system."

I noticed that as McAfee spoke, Spanos and I were both wearing gold wristbands for admission, which were handed out by conference organizers, who couldn’t even provide food for attendees. The conference’s low-key tone gave the liberal party an underdog vibe when it came to the impact of the party’s ideas on the powerful Republican Party. Against that backdrop, McAfee’s call for change sounded powerful.

Spanos wants to take an incremental approach to change, so McAfee's strong accusations are ridiculous to him. Spanos hopes to expand the product's promotion beyond the Liberal Party, saying that the company's product will soon be adopted and will make those third parties with no economic acumen pale in comparison. He said he is discussing the issue of running elections on the company's software with multiple domestic and foreign governments.

This has nothing to do with purity and truth

Spanos grew up tinkering with circuit components on Long Island, and has spent the past decade researching how to bring new technology to campaign consulting and elections. He said Blockchain Technologies Corp. was inspired in part by the frustrating experience of the opacity of Florida's presidential election system in 2004. He was working with the Republicans at the time, and remembers asking, "Let me see the source code," but was rejected every time, which made him extremely frustrated. "If you don't know how the machine works, how can you ensure the transparency of the election! They are completely calculating digital unicorns!"

The principle of the Blockchain Technologies proposal is simple; in the system that Spanos built over a weekend, voters fill out paper ballots with three QR codes on them that represent unique blockchain identities. After scanning the QR codes, the system sends the digitized ballot to the candidate's wallet, and then the blockchain record is added. After the election is completed, the public blockchain is open for inspection (of course, as in traditional elections, the voters' identities are not displayed on the ballot).

The company's voting mechanism only requires a computer, a printer, a monitor and a scanner. Spanos said that in order to ensure information security, these devices cannot be connected to the Internet; Blockchain's technology is applicable to various voting scenarios, including electronic voting equipment. However, he emphasized that he would rather voters mark on paper ballots. This means that by retaining paper ballots, the reliability of the system is improved, and voters can also be more relaxed. "People need paper ballots, and it may take some time for voters to fully trust a computer." Spanos said that blockchain technology can improve the credibility of simulated paper ballots by saving the results to the blockchain, adding obstacles to tampering with the results later.

They are counting digital unicorns

Spanos leans liberal, but has worked for Republicans and Democrats, so he’s comfortable with politicians of all stripes. As his team sets up the voting system in the semi-dark corner of the restaurant, Spanos pushes aside the silverware and opens his laptop. Using the Wi-Fi of a nearby restaurant, Spanos shows me some inscrutable blockchain code, then opens a few photos of him working with foreign politicians. There are photos with former Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev, shaking hands with Somali politicians, and his most proud, jerky video of him boldly putting his feet on a coffee table, right under the nose of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. (He says he’s also good at event planning and the logistics of high-profile public figures.)

Spanos said the charm of Blockchain is that it makes it difficult to manipulate the system, even for biased system administrators. He pointed to a colleague's unused ballot printed on office paper and said, "But I can't change this thing." "Even if I want to change this person's ballot, the paper ballot is still here and the whole world can see it."

Even if I wanted to change this person's vote, I couldn't.

Spanos's pitch was enough to convince a group of clients. His firm ran the Rand Paul primary in Iowa in February and last month managed the 2016 Texas Libertarian Party election. Spanos said he has talked to multiple foreign governments about voting management. He declined to reveal specifics because of political sensitivities and competition. He has also spoken with the U.S. government's judicial branch, including the Texas school board, and he said he could be a successful candidate in this first official government election.

When voting began on Saturday, Spanos carried a wire basket around the faux-wood voting field to collect ballots. As Spanos took the ballots to the voting management team in the next room, a crowd quickly gathered around him; after a few words with these onlookers, he began to realize that these people were observers sent by the candidates to monitor

What did Stalin say? It's not who votes, but who counts the votes that matters

This is not surprising, as the people I spoke to at the Libertarian Party convention, like all conservatives in the United States, distrust election administration; this is undoubtedly something Blockchain Technologies could exploit. It is not difficult to imagine that in red states where officials feel the same way, people would be willing to listen to Blockchain Technologies' speech on preventing rampant election fraud.

The day after the event, Spanos sent me a Republican video in which Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said that electronic voting machines appeared to have been tampered with.

"It may have happened, they may have tampered with the election in Arizona. The company's system can preserve clues. But even if nothing happened and no one was robbed, they still need some confidence."

"What did Stalin say? What matters is not who votes, but who counts the votes."

Spanos mused:

"But if the votes are counted publicly, it goes back to the question of who voted."