With allegations that the 2016 US election was rigged by Russia and President Trump making controversial claims of voter fraud through mail-in ballots few days ago, it is great to find out whether using blockchain technologies can provide a secure and unhackable record and help overcome the problem with traditional voting.

First, what is this buzz word-blockchain?. It is a distributed, digitized and consensus-based secure information mechanism.

Three advantages e-voting using blockchain over traditional voting include*:

1. Immutability. Blockchain technology’s architecture offers an immutable apparatus. The memory of the technology cannot be tampered with
2. Transparency. It offers transparency in terms of validating the accuracy of the trail of inputted votes.
3. Processing time. The turn-around time post the election to the final result announcement will be significantly reduced with ‘blockchain voting’

However, ‘security of remote participation and scalability should be improved for sustainable blockchain based e-voting.” Also before moving to blockchain, it is important to determine the following: the technology requirements for each voter to cast a ballot and how voters would verify their identity online.

References;

Barrere B and Goga D. The U.S. election system is not ready for blockchain technology…yet. granthornton.com

Chirag Bhardwaj. Can Blockchain Change How we vote. appinventive.com

Tas R and Tanriover O O. A systematic review of challenges and opportunities of blockchain for e-voting. Symmetry