Future of Blockchain Voting: Understanding the Blockchain Usecase

Blockchain as a technology has an impact on a wide range of industries. It is changing the way things have always been done, making them appear more democratic. Its potential has been recognized in areas other than cryptocurrency. 

Organizations and others who are reluctant towards cryptocurrencies are also in favor of blockchain technology adoption. Several industries, including cloud storage, supply chain management systems, crowdfunding, and even healthcare, have seen radical changes as a result of blockchain. 

Consequently, voting is one of the most significant domains that blockchain's decentralized muscle can solve. Let's examine it more closely.

The Need for Digital Voting

Even in the 21st century, online voting is still not possible in most countries. Voters need to leave their houses and cast votes. As a result, when the pandemic struck, elections were postponed since many people did not want to vote in person and could not vote online. 

A lot of effort is expended, and an entire day is devoted to the voting process in order to engage voters. Many countries hold general elections on Saturdays or Sundays to allow as many people as possible to vote. Election day is declared a public holiday in several countries or sections of countries that hold elections on a weekday.

Despite all of this effort and spending a whole day of the economy, the majority of areas had voting rates of 60-70%. This reveals far too much about the existing system's inefficiency. There are several flaws associated with current traditional voting, such as false/duplicate voting, counting mistakes, vote rejection, and human manipulation.

Furthermore, voting inside an organization cannot be done in this way, there are many issues. If the voting is scheduled on a weekday, all of the members will be unable to attend since they are at work. Their time is wasted if it is kept on the weekend. There will be complaints regarding time, place, and many more factors.

Digital voting solves many of these problems. Voters will be able to use their voting right in a few clicks from anywhere on the earth with an internet connection, whether using a mobile phone, a tablet, or a computer. It works efficiently for an organization and elections on a small level. 

However, incorporating digital voting into traditional democratic systems is not as simple as it appears. The possibility of hacking and online identity verification are the two biggest obstacles. Although online identity verification is possible, this method is not safe from hackers. It is vulnerable to a variety of security concerns, such as DDoS attacks, vote alteration and manipulation, malware attacks, and so on. 

There are several options, benefits, and drawbacks. Many nations are successfully carrying out this model of elections in local municipality elections. However, it has been shown that on a broad scale, this approach is not very dependable.

The voting process can be made more safe, transparent, immutable, and dependable by utilizing blockchain and many nations have also started implementing it. Let's examine it and its functioning in more detail.

Voting with Blockchain Technology

A blockchain is a type of digital ledger. The technology validates and records all systemwide transactions using peers, also known as nodes, on its network. This ledger exists on a "chain" supported by millions of nodes at once. 

The Blockchain's transaction database is incorruptible and each record is simple to verify due to encryption and decentralization. The network cannot be shut down or impacted by a single entity since it does not exist in a single place. Transactions are being verified efficiently by nodes, making the system more secure. 

However, blockchain is not just for financial transactions; it can also be used for data transfer. Voting benefits greatly from this property of data transmission since a vote is also like a piece of data. Tokens on the blockchain are used as a means of data transfer. 

Blockchain can be used to address the massive problems that these early attempts at online voting have shown. A blockchain-based voting application does not worry about the security of its Internet connection since any hacker with access to the terminal will not be able to affect other nodes.

In traditional database systems, votes can be added, updated, or deleted. However, on a blockchain, you can only input data, not change or delete it. As a result, when you input something, it stays there forever and no one can change it.

A voting system with blockchain will be decentralized and not depend on one specific party or authority. which means that if one server fails or anything happens on a specific node, other nodes can continue to operate normally without having to wait for the afflicted node to recover.

The voting authority, which keeps a voter registration, requires each registered user to generate a public/private key pair and provide their public key to the registry. The voting authority then allocates one coin to each public key. Each user spends their currency on the candidate of their choosing to vote for.

In essence, voters will be provided a token that can be used to vote. Voting is done by moving the token from the appropriate voter’s account to the candidate's wallet. Only one vote per account is permitted, and after a vote is made, the account is removed from the current voting process. A DApp will calculate the votes and provide details about the total number of voters, the number of votes cast, and the percentage of votes cast.

Voters can also trace back their votes. Blockchain keeps everything as a transaction, and so provides a receipt of the vote to the voter (in the form of a transaction ID), which you can use to prove that your vote was safely recorded. Since each ID can be connected to a specific vote, no fakes can be created, and tampering is impossible, officials can count votes with confidence.

The advantages of blockchain technology in the voting process

Transparency

A Blockchain voting system would offer transparency in terms of confirming the accuracy of the voting record. In a blockchain-based electronic voting system, submissions would be time-stamped, encrypted, and protected using private keys.

As compared to the traditional voting system, where voters cast votes without revealing their identity or political opinions to the public. Voters can also trace back their votes in this blockchain-enabled voting system. 

Immutability

In a blockchain e-voting system, the dependency on a centralized authority to protect cyberspace is automatically abolished because the nodes are dispersed at random. Not to mention the extra degrees of anonymity the peer-to-peer network gives the system as a whole. 

Blockchain-based electronic voting may introduce common identification procedures for voters to safeguard the credibility of the election, including two-factor authentication.

Privacy

Due to its irreversible system architecture, many experts think that blockchain technology can aid in online voting. However, the public has high expectations for two crucial aspects of online voting systems: security and privacy. As the first widely used implementation of the technology, the Bitcoin Blockchain has never been altered.

As the node chain gets longer, a 51 percent attack gets increasingly sophisticated, inventive, and illogical. Due to its scary, divine, and law-abiding reputation, the blockchain can observe elections and act as a trusted agent.

Process duration

By the criteria of today's technology, it takes a long time from the election to the announcement of the results. It takes a significant amount of time to coordinate an enormously large-scale operation, including election specialists. But with blockchains, which, by the way, deliver real-time results, all of that can vanish in an instant.

Blockchain makes it possible to find out the top representative chosen by the public within minutes after the end of the final round of voting.

Conclusion

Because present voting methods do not meet the security demands of the modern generation, a system that utilizes the security, convenience, and trust involved in the voting process is required. As a result, voting systems leverage Blockchain technology to offer an extra degree of security, enable individuals to vote at any time, from any location and make the voting process more cost-effective and time-saving.

Blockchain technology has the power to change the current voting process effectively and reliably, improving voter integrity while speeding up the voting process. It has the potential to greatly improve a country's voting processes, and several nations are already using it, including the USA, Japan, Sierra Leone, and Russia.