Blockchain Applications: Election Voting
By: Denise Tambanis
Tags: Voting, Social Impact, Democracy, Blockchain, Blockchain Application

Governance and Privacy Issues in Blockchain

In terms of the end-to-end solution, voters can access the voting systems using computers and mobile phones, and blockchain technology is used to store and update voting data. Aside from the general security issues relating to internet and mobile technology, there are specific concerns over the use of blockchain technology in elections. These concerns relate to governance and privacy, that is, who makes the decisions on the blockchain and what kind of information is shared about the participants.

Public, Permissionless Blockchain — The Ideal System

Many people believe that blockchain systems should be decentralised, public and permissionless in the same way that Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin operate.¹⁵ Such systems eliminate centralised intermediaries and therefore no single trusted entity is required to operate or can potentially corrupt the voting system. This type of blockchain is completely open — anyone can read the data in the blockchain and participate in the consensus protocol to secure the network and add blocks. In theory, these open systems are particularly appealing for countries with poor systems or corrupt governments.

However, there are some drawbacks to using completely decentralised blockchain architecture. In practice, public permissionless blockchains can result in unlimited participants and copies of the distributed ledger, which can slow down the network and require a lot of energy to run. There are also issues of privacy and confidentiality that make public permissionless systems less appropriate for sectors such as banking, health and voting. In terms of voting, democratic processes typically require individual votes to be private (secret ballots) to ensure that people are free to vote in any way they wish and to avoid the potential for people to sell their votes. In addition, voters provide personal information to register to vote and would not want this and other voter registry information to be publicly available.

Blockchain Voting Requires Confidentiality

Blockchain technology has evolved to include public (permissionless) and private (permissioned) blockchain systems.¹⁶ Private and permissioned systems continue to use distributed ledger technology, but vary in terms of the privacy of data and transactions and whether the participants need to be invited or require ‘permission’ to be part of the consensus process that determines which blocks of data are verified and added to the blockchain.¹⁷

Permissioned Blockchain Usage in Current Projects

Each of the blockchain voting cases studies mentioned use permissioned blockchain. The Voatz ‘permissioned’ blockchain is built using the HyperLedger blockchain framework first created by IBM, now supported by the Linux foundation. In order to participate in the permissioned blockchain, a voter or auditor must first be verified. Voatz believed that the initial rollout of a blockchain-based election technology benefits greatly from using permissioned verifiers as it prevents intentional bad actors from participating as verifiers. Voatz also believes this accurately emulates how elections are presently administered in the United States.¹⁸ In the West Virginia pilot, 4 to 16 verified validating nodes were used, split between multiple cloud providers, each of which are geographically distributed. In the future, the Secretary of State or an independent State Election Board can increase the number of nodes and designate which organizations (e.g. political parties, universities, the media, NGOs, non-profits, auditors, etc.) can participate in the blockchain network as verifiers. Votem and Smartmatic-Cybernetica also used permissioned blockchain.

Permissioned Blockchains Improve Efficiency

In addition to improving confidentiality, fewer nodes and simpler consensus mechanisms mean that permissioned systems can be faster and more efficient than permissionless systems.¹⁹ This helps to mitigate concerns that public permissionless blockchain is energy intensive and not scalable.

Governance Issues in Permissioned Blockchain

Permissioned blockchain voting systems are controlled by the companies that develop them, and even when they bring in third-party verifiers like government agencies, non-profits and auditors, it is possible that the developers can change the rules that run the blockchain or choose verifiers that are or can be biased and unduly influence the system. These governance issues are less likely to be a problem in well-designed blockchain systems and well-functioning democracies that can put in appropriate checks and balances. However, in countries without strong democratic systems, governance of the blockchain could be problematic.

Privacy Issues in Blockchain Voting

While most of the blockchain solutions reviewed appear to use encryption and other processes to ensure voter information is not stored and that votes cannot be made public, many voting experts and participants remain concerned that these systems may not be secure or well designed.

“In many countries, governments and regulators often have legal responsibilities to validate election results and verify the integrity of the electoral process.”²⁰ — Mike Summers, Smartmatic-Cybernetica Centre of Excellence for Internet Voting

In order for voting systems to be transparent and publicly auditable, data needs to be publicly accessible. This is at odds with the need to keep voter information and votes confidential and is a concern for voting experts. Voatz deals with this issue by building auditing and privacy into the process. They directly worked with the State of West Virginia and independent third-party companies to audit the system. Additionally, they run a bug bounty program for community vetting of its platform releases. Once votes are cast, voters receive an automatic digital receipt. When election officials access the votes, a paper ballot is generated for each mobile vote that can be compared to the voter’s digital receipt and the blockchain record. This acts as an audit mechanism and a hard-copy backup.

There is no evidence that there were any security or privacy issues associated with any of the three blockchain voting case studies. However, these are early stage projects and further testing and validation will be required. As systems scale, and are used in countries and jurisdictions with different participants, rules and beliefs, ensuring systems are private but auditable will be important to ensuring voter confidence and the integrity of voting systems.