Blockchain Revolution

participation such as the mining function—could encourage citizens’ engagement and
learning about issues, while at the same time invigorating the public sector with the
keen reasoning the nation can collectively offer. Could we create a culture where
people are turned on by the democratic process, not turned off by their
representatives’ abuse of their seats?

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Why has this not occurred to date? The main problem is not a technological one.
Most politicians, regardless of political stripe, seem to care more about winning
elections than about solving the crisis of legitimacy through citizen engagement.
Let’s start with the basics. The most fundamental process for representative
democracy is the election. Voting is the right (and in some countries, like Belgium, the
responsibility) of all eligible citizens in a democracy. Yet around the world elections
are deeply flawed. Corrupt officials tamper with results or outright rig them. Voting
can be suppressed using everything from lack of access to bribery and intimidation.
Manipulating elections is a complex business but it’s done almost everywhere. Could
blockchain technologies help improve the voting process?
For all our technological advances, the mechanics of voting in elections have
remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. In many parts of the world, to cast
your vote you go to a polling station, identify yourself, mark a paper ballot, put it in a
secured box, and wait for human beings to count the ballots.
Electronic voting (e-voting) is a term for voting with the aid of any electronic
system. E-voting has, in many cases, proved as unreliable as manually tallied votes.
E-voting today suffers from three problems: attacks on the software and hardware,
mistakes or bugs in the coding, and human error. In 2004, a voting machine aiding in
the general election in North Carolina was accidentally set to store only 3,000 votes. It
irrevocably lost 4,438 votes in a race that was decied by a difference of only 2,287.
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