Sunday, July 15, 2018

Voting Beyond Digital and Paper Ballot

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have perverted it withtyranny......Thomas Jefferson



Voting is an absolutely essential tool for any democratic government, it is the carnival of democracy.
But it is really fascinating that a lot of countries are yet to move from the digital or traditional paper ballot system of voting.

The Problems with Traditional Paper Ballot System
• From physically going to the venues and waiting in long lines, The entire process is extremely tedious.

• The amount of time taken to count the votes is too high.

• The election can be hijacked via the insertion of bogus ballot papers.

• More powerful parties can use intimidation tactics on the venues to rig the election in a certain way.

• The amount of paper wastage can cause harm to the environment.

• There is no historical record possible to keep track of each and every vote made.

• The cost of expenditure on paper ballots is very high.

• It is impossible to keep track of your vote.

• Once you have cast a vote you cannot change it.

These are some issues with digital voting system:

• The client side machine could develop a malware which reads each and every vote cast and changes the
vote to the other candidate.

• An attacker can directly infect the servers through malware placed on the servers and transfer the votes.
Burning Questions:
What exactly happens to your votes after you cast it?
How is integrating blockchain technology going to fix this?

The goal is simple; To make the election process as transparent as possible.

The use Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) to create votes can make the electoral process transparent. ECC is a form of asymmetric cryptography. Asymmetric cryptography uses two keys (a public key and a private key) to encrypt and decrypt data. ECC is basically what bitcoin and ethereum use for their cryptography

Any potential voter can securely login using their webcam and government issued ID.
After they are done the voting, anyone can use their voting ID to track their votes and check that it has been cast correctly. On top of that. They even give their voters the ability to change their votes any number of times till the deadline.


See You at the Top