Voting and Blockchain

The majority of you reading this article are probably fairly familiar with what the blockchain (we’ll keep saying “the blockchain” here, for convenience sake) can do. I’m sure that you have heard about all of the proposed projects that can be built on the blockchain and all of the good that they will do. I do not doubt any of these claims, but instead I marvel at the grandiose projects while becoming truly and more deeply interested in the projects that can appeal to all people, near and far. The blockchain can do this. The blockchain can stop voter fraud.

For those of us in the United States , we usually see the same thing over and over, especially as of late; an election takes place, one person loses, that person either concedes or demands a recount. If they demand a recount and it still turns out they lose, they may allege voter fraud. More recently we saw it happen with Doug Jones (D) and Roy Moore (R) in Alabama’s special election. Roy Moore refuses to concede, claiming that voter fraud is the only reason that he lost. The blockchain has certain characteristics that make it unique, but among those features are those that can be applied to voting and verification of those votes. When something gets put on the blockchain, that data becomes immutable and it is verified by all the “nodes” on the network. Imagine if every vote that was cast was held up in front of a crowd of thousands of people for them all to see, and then the vote is placed in the ballot box for all to see. Sure, that would never happen, but on the blockchain it could happen.

Okay, well, here is the thing about voting nowadays. You show up to your local polling place, which is usually some crusty public establishment, and you wait in line for what seems like ever, and then you finally cast your vote. Imagine that you could circumvent all of this by voting from your phone or computer or some other device, that would be great, wouldn’t it? Let’s talk about the problems, real quick. There would have to be a dynamic way of ensuring that a voter only votes once, aside from the security and permanence of their initial vote on the blockchain. That’s just the first roadblock. Next, we have to consider the scalability issue and the bottlenecking of the blockchain when overwhelmed. That would take forever, and the thing about an election is that voters usually want to know who won almost immediately. The people would be pissed, for lack of better words. There’s sure to be many more problems, and to be honest probably dozens, that are going to appear but let’s make things a bit more hasty and move on, shall we?

Alright people, give me a break, I get it, I just really laid out some negative things BUT I have some good news. I’m about to tell you all about the problems related to voter fraud and voting that the blockchain can help alleviate or even get rid of. Gerrymandering is the act of defining districts or areas to favor one party or class. In layman’s terms, this is basically how certain parties earn more seats than other parties based on the way that their voting districts are aligned (see state legislature elections) . Something as simple as a secure web app that will publish right to the blockchain would effectively put an end to gerrymandering. Let’s also talk about voter suppression. Voter suppression is when an entity purposefully places restrictions and “roadblocks” in the voting process to prevent certain groups from casting their vote. With the added security of the blockchain, many of these identification regulations would be cast aside. You would no longer be able to justify redundant and blatantly abusive regulations. Blockchain can help.

The world CAN be a better place, but how often do we mobilize to try to actually make it so? We live in a time where we can revolutionize finance, democracy and technology. These are exciting times and we need to push for change. For our children, for our Earth, for whatever it is that you hold dear. Care. That’s all it takes. Get out there and vote. Get out there and advocate cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and open up minds. As always, good luck and stay well.

-Gabe

References:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-may-help-prevent-voting-fraud-increase-governments-responsiveness
http://reason.com/archives/2017/09/12/bitcoins-blockchain-tech-could-be-the-an
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/12/26/how-conquer-partisan-gerrymandering/MRdsgd3cx7R6MiodBFW5QI/story.html