Blockchain Revolution

Protecting the Voters
Voter intimidation can take a violent turn. In Zimbabwe, the party opposing Robert
Mugabe withdrew from the election when coercion from supporting militias had
become too lethal. The elections were carried out anyway—Mugabe won. While
technological advances always come with people who exploit them to their own
advantage, some are beginning to say that blockchain technology could eradicate
corruption in places such as Asia.
In July 2014, during one of the most contested presidential elections in Indonesian
history, an anonymous group of seven hundred hackers created an organization called
Kawal Pemilu, or “Protect the Vote.” Its mission was to publicly tally election ballots
online to let voters verify results at each polling station. The principles of
decentralization, transparency, and individual anonymity combined to ward off
malicious cyberattacks and ensure a fairer election.
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“Do corrupt governments want to keep themselves honest?”
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asked Anson Zeall,
CEO of CoinPip, a company specializing in sending fiat currencies across
international boundaries using the blockchain. He questions whether everyone
embraces advances in voting, and whether politicians actually want fair elections. To
others, e-voting seems like an unnecessary or hasty leap forward. We argue that many
of these issues belong to the realm of implementation, not design.
The redesign of our electoral and political systems will likely influence more
fundamental issues with voting in democratic elections. Compare voter ID fraud with
other more insidious factors. A comprehensive investigation of voter ID fraud in the
United States in 2014 found thirty-one incidents, including prosecutions and credible
allegations, in federal, state, and municipal elections—since 2000.
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In that time,
more than one billion ballots were cast in general and primary elections alone.
In the four states with the harshest ID laws, more than three thousand votes were
positively rejected for lack of proper ID.
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This doesn’t include those who didn’t
bother to try at all—and that is a much bigger problem. While their model of
democracy is heralded around the world, most Americans don’t vote in elections,
citing reasons like “nothing ever gets done,” “politics is so corrupt,” and “there is no
difference between the choices.”
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We expect blockchain technology to have some
innovative approaches to these problems, too.
With time and development, blockchain technology might be the impetus that
allows e-voting to transform democratic elections and institutions by effectively and
reliably bringing them into voters’ hands.