A High-Tech Democracy: Blockchain and the Future of Voting
Political theorists have long recognised the importance of elections in democratic societies. In its purest form, democracy is a system of government that values individual liberties, freedom of expression, and establishes the collective power of the people through which they decide their future. The foundation of such a democratic tradition is the right to vote. A ballot cast is a voice heard, an opinion expressed, and a person empowered. Yet, voter turnout is on the decline. In The 2021 Canadian Federal Election, only 62 percent of eligible Canadians vote, and in The 2020 US Presidential Election, just over 60 percent of voters cast their ballots. One might argue that this low level of voter turnout shows, not that people do not value their democratic voice, but rather that the voting process has been designed in a way that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to express one’s opinion at the ballot box. A recent study conducted in the US suggests that administrative issues, including registration hassles, long lines at voting stations, complicated identification requirements, and a lack of infrastructure in certain communities, significantly contribute to the low turnout. The democratic process needs reform. Blockchain may offer a way to both increase efficiency, security, and accountability on election day, consequently improving voter turnout.
Modern elections still face challenges associated with inconvenience. Despite advances in technology, political and legal systems have been slow to adapt. Voters are still required to vote in-person using paper ballots, often experiencing time-consuming registration processes and long wait times at voting stations. There are significant social dimensions to this administrative issue, as these inefficiencies do not impact all citizens equally. The low turnout rates in federal and local elections are not equally distributed, but rather run along traditional racial, socioeconomic, and generational fault lines. In the US, racial minorities, lower income citizens, and younger generations are all less likely to vote. This leads to a disproportionate overrepresentation of specific demographics. In his book, Blockchain Democracy, William Magnuson argues that as election turnout rates decrease, the power of the vote to reflect societal preferences erodes as one less vote equals one less set of preferences in the aggregate. If we apply Magnuson’s argument, such a distortion of preferences undermines the collective action and equality promised by democratic institutions.
Blockchain may offer a way to make voting more accessible, and thus easier for groups that may be excluded due to inconvenience. Blockchain is a decentralised ledger that records transactions of all kinds securely and efficiently across peer-to-peer networks. According to Phemex, a crypto investing platform, blockchain voting could function by enabling each voter to verify their citizenship, receive a ballot token, then use that distinct token to send their ballot “to the address or wallet corresponding to the candidate or party they wish to vote for.” As long as voters have access to a device, they can use the blockchain to cast their vote from anywhere. Such a system would remove geographic barriers and may ease socioeconomic obstacles that have traditionally impacted voters. It has significant potential to restore legitimacy in the currently inefficient and flawed voting process.
From a logistics perspective, blockchain voting is convenient, effective, and safe. Voters can cast their ballots in minutes and get up-to-date tallies of votes. Blockchain voting can incorporate smart contracts to count votes automatically and can be used to help collect information about voting in different regions, thus removing the need for manual counting and poll workers. This would increase the speed at which votes are counted, and may reduce the likelihood of error or possibility of corruption.
Integrity is vital to any election. Critics of electronic voting solutions, such as blockchain, argue that there is potential for one or more bad actors to hack and interfere with the election results, compromising voter data. However, this same criticism could be applied to the current voting system, based on a centralised network. Blockchain, by contrast, stores a copy of the ledger on each node in the network, making it impossible to alter voting records once ballots have been cast. Information cannot be destroyed or altered since blockchain does not have a central point for cyberattacks. Moreover, blockchain’s distributed ledger prevents people from casting fraudulent ballots; blockchain could help to reduce the risk of electoral fraud, as attempting to undermine the election would be too expensive computationally. Blockchain uses cryptography to maintain transaction security and must be verified by other nodes on the blockchain before the vote can be cast and tallied. Attempting to manipulate this system would require a hacker to control more than 50 percent of the computing power in a network which would not be an easy task. Additionally, voter verification would prevent individuals from undermining the legitimacy of the election. Companies like Voatz allow for quick and secure ID verification, which would reduce the overall amount of time it takes to vote. Voatz would require voters to upload key personal information, pictures of government ID, and biometric data to verify one's citizenship. This allows for greater confidence in the process, the outcome, and the decisions made by newly elected leaders or parties.
Protection of personal information is also crucial for voting, as it prevents actors from attempting to influence specific voter decisions. Due to blockchain’s immutability, blockchain voting systems can allow citizens to have complete control over their data while maintaining transparency and preventing voter fraud. These characteristics are important in other democratic countries, especially where past elections have been rigged and voices have been silenced, such as in the elections in Kenya in 2008. After trailing by over a million votes, incumbent Mwai Kibaki was declared the Presidential winner and was sworn in through a secret ceremony, allegedly stealing the election from Raila Odinga and the Kenyan people. President Kibaki later used his power to suppress the media and quash protestors that demanded his resignation. This election theft occurred in part because of the corruption in the count of votes. This is just one example of how election processes can be abused by powerful individuals. Blockchain voting not only increases the accountability of political leaders to respect the election's outcomes, but it also largely eliminates corruption and provides the country with an accurate understanding of what the people want.
Blockchain voting has started to emerge, both in theory and practice. The president of The Free Republic of Liberland, a microstate between Croatia and Serbia, roughly 2.7 square miles wide, wants to undertake a radical new political structure, whereby citizens vote on policy decisions through a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) using a new cryptocurrency called Merit. This presents a new set of opportunities in government, as it opens the possibility for citizens to be more vocal on specific policies, rather than exercising their democratic voice simply by electing senators, MPs, and other representatives to carry out their interests.
Despite its benefits, blockchain voting exhibits inherent risks that are hard to overcome. A paper published at MIT argued that the risk of voter fraud does not outweigh the potential increase in voter turnout, which they too deemed inconclusive. They claim that, given current capabilities, adopting a blockchain voting system would entail sacrificing voter integrity. There is no question that further research and development is necessary before blockchain voting becomes a widely adopted practice. An interdisciplinary study of blockchain’s role in political and legal systems would require collaboration between industries and individuals, including computer scientists, regulators, policymakers, and academics to understand the benefits and costs of this potential new system.