In today’s world, widespread mistrust towards the government and interference in countries’ processes by external actors have made the democratic process of voting more critical than ever. Democratic countries have been experiencing dictatorial regimes which have introduced widespread terror among their people. People have had their human rights violated and their freedoms provided by their constitution taken away. In such an atmosphere, having a fair and transparent election is something that is paramount for the freedom most people enjoy today. The pitfalls of the current system of ballot voting are being taken advantage of by people or organizations looking to gain power. In Kenya there has been widespread controversy over their elections in recent years. These instances could all have been avoided if the counting process was fair, transparent and verifiable. The current ballot system does offer anonymity to the voter but the counting process is not transparent. People are supposed to trust the result which is provided by an Election commission or a government body. This makes the process of counting, a major vulnerability in the current process. There are also other major electoral scams such as voter fraud, ballot stuffing and booth capturing. All these make it very difficult for organizers of an election to distinguish between the actual votes and votes added without authorization.
A blockchain is an audit trail for a database which is managed by a network of computers where no single computer is responsible for storing or maintaining the database, and any computer may enter or leave this network at any time without jeopardizing the integrity or availability of the database. Any computer can rebuild the database from scratch by downloading the blockchain and processing the audit trail. The most obvious example of blockchain technology in use today is Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a digital currency system which uses a blockchain to keep track of ownership of the currency. Whenever someone wishes to spend their bitcoins, they create a transaction which states that they are sending a certain number of their bitcoins to someone else. Then they digitally sign this transaction to authorize it, and broadcast it to all of the nodes in the Bitcoin network. When the next node creates a block, it will check that the new transaction is valid, and include it in the new block, which is then propagated to all other nodes in the network, which adjust their databases to deduct the transferred bitcoins from the sender and credit them to the recipient. Same can happen to the votes we cast.
Since the democracy, elections throughout the world have been plagued with accusations of illegitimacy. Voting using blockchain could eliminate electoral fraud by making votes immutable, verifiable and traceable and it will make results available instantly, as soon as the election closes. As such, when votes are recorded on a blockchain, it will enable citizens to be 100% sure that their vote is submitted, that it is counted and that it has not been changed while ensuring complete privacy for the voter.