Every vote counts! Counting votes through blockchain technology

12

September

2018

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In March 2018, during the referendum in Groningen, the Netherlands, a pilot on the counting of votes was conducted. The pilot was focused on counting votes through an application based on blockchain technology. Groningen realised this pilot in collaboration with Berenschot (consultancy firm) and LAB15 (technological partner).

The project was initiated in order to strengthen the reliability on election outcomes. The main motive was the combination of the risks that turned out to be present within the current election process and a number of incidents that were announced regarding the national elections in 2017. One of these incidents was the fact that 9.000 votes that turned out not to be counted in Den Bosch during the national elections. Furthermore, the software that is currently used contains security leaks that make the elections vulnerable to hackers.

The choice for an application based on blockchain technology was mainly made due to its characteristics: transparency, controllability and reliability. All three are very valuable throughout an election process.

The pilot was conducted fully parallel to the normal election process in five of the stations were citizens could vote. By scanning the QR-codes on the voting passes, the requirement of everyone only voting once could be assured as well as the number of people that had voted could be followed real-time throughout the day. Privacy of the voters was guaranteed due to the fact that the voting itself was done in an analogous was. From the moment the counters started the process of counting votes, everyone could follow the results real-time here.

By the use of control numbers, everyone has the chance to notice a miscounting, when and where the mistake was made, and whether it was corrected already.

 

The results of the pilot per location
The results of the voting per location

 

I am curious to hear your opinion on last year’s pilot and the potential of the usage of blockchain technology within the election process in general. Do you think the reliability of results within elections may be enhanced by the use of blockchain technology? Would you consider any restrictions to the technology when it comes to further development of the application within the election process?

 

Sources (mainly in Dutch unfortunately):

 

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A Millennials-Based Voting System

21

October

2016

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Have you voted yet? I am currently 21 years old, and I shamefully confess that I have not yet voted. I have a lot of good reasons why I haven’t, but the one I would like to focus on is lack of easy access to voting. Ever since I turned 13 I have been living out of my country of nationality, which makes it harder to vote. I could vote from any country Ecuador, my country, has an embassy/consulate in. If I live in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, the process would involve going to the consulate in Amsterdam or The Hague, registering, and when time has come sending my ballot. The whole process would probably take a total of 6 hours. Whereas making an online transfer can be done in less than a minute. My point being that millennials have not been properly equipped with the ability to go through one of these processes without finding it completely inefficient and “a waste of our time”. Could this be the reason why the turnout for Brexit for people between 18 and 24 was so low? I’m not going to go into how we must change society so that this stops happening, but into changing the process to fit the new society.

Online voting has been the standard in Estonia since 2005, when will the rest of the world level up? One of the main concerns regarding online voting is security. How can you make sure that no one will hack the system and change the results? This is a very valid concern, since the amount of people with accessibility (even if limited) to the system will be higher than it currently is. But what if we implement a system that works in a very similar way to Bitcoin. A peer-reviewed system that can work with verifications. Currently, you have to trust that the counting systems and people involved with these, but how about not having to trust anyone and being able to check it all.

A downside of this could be that people do not want to share with others who they voted for, even less so with authority figures. But imagine the following scenario: you have to provide your citizen information to be able to vote, and after you cast your vote, you are given a username which you can use to track your vote without allowing your ID to be linked to the vote. The rest of demographical information can remain in the system and allow for better analysis of the results.

This is a highly simplified version of how an online voting system could work. There are countless things that must be taken into account before making a change in the process, but providing an online voting system would definitely increase the participation of a specific segment of the population in political activities. Don’t you think?

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