Blockchain could change our future even in elections?

[Ndabagi01]

Using blockchain for voting is not impossible; in fact, it is. But, considering how the blockchain was designed to be open and decentralised, creating something similar to be used for elections will not be as decentralised as the blockchain because even the government that will design it will not be just and will have manipulated many things inside that can easily change the consensus on which it will work. We can get close to the perfection we want, but there will be some manipulation as long as the government is involved, and they will be in charge of its design.

[ObscurePen]

Blockchain technology has so many uses outside Bitcoin and digital currency. A blockchain is basically a shared ledger of data. Importantly this ledger is tamper proof. Once data has been recorded it can't be removed or altered without consensus of the whole system. So there is no single point of failure like in a centralised system.

If a government were to implement Blockchain technology in elections. It wouldn't have all the features of a decentralised blockchain. It would be a private network where the government hold an authority to determine members and functions of each member. It can decide which members can participate in the network. It would select who would maintain shared copies of the ledger. And the government would have the ability to edit entries on the blockchain.
But it maintains the concept of immutability and consensus making an external attack on the system difficult.

So in short, Blockchain can very well be used in elections, but it wouldn't employ the same principles as bitcoin does. It would still be centralised and there would still be avenues for corruption.

[oktana]

Elections are a centralised process that is controlled by the government. So for an election, you should have all the data on the blockchain voting system. We know all the data would be public if it weren't encrypted, which isn't a good idea at all. I am not a developer and don't have much idea about coding. But for the voting system, there should be a transparent process. I don't believe blockchain would help with such things as a centralised voting process. Blockchain seems to be more interesting in the financial and technological sectors.

But the blockchain is transparent, which means it could serve the purpose. Remember that the government can control their own database and manipulate data, but with blockchain, every transaction is created once and for all, no one can hide the database or do anything at all. Of course not everyone will know how to verify the elections result (tech savvy) if it was implemented but people who know how to do that will do it will verify all the transactions. Just like running the bitcoin node which I’m currently doing 

[Churchillvv]

One thing I can say about the idea of using Blockchain technology for elections is that it varies from one country to another. if electronic election is currently possible in your country well mine it's not even with the few attempts that seems to have succeed yet it's still manipulated.

With the rate of corruption in electoral process I believe it's very much good to use Blockchain technology as a means to achieve free and fair election that will produce the accurate result but there are still so many disadvantages attached to it that's why the idea can't really be bought for now.

[abel1337]

I have seen ideas like this before, the transparency of blockchain is what makes it a good option for a country voting system. But just like any countries in the world, I doubt that no one will ever try this given that there are no such honest country. I personally believe that there are some manipulation on voting on every countries in the world. These politicians that are currently sitting won't let this kind of fairness, unless they have extra plans to manipulate or cheat the voting even if it is on the blockchain. One example of this is dummies that will be voting on their side.

[Antidiluvian]

I would rather have a round table of 100,000 unique citizen presidents of all communities tiny and large making decisions needed for their own unique communal situations than some cookie cutter 1 fits all people crapola... better imo than 1 meathead like biden making the US look like r-tards

[martinex]

It seems that in the future there will be updates to the election process..

I think there is added value too, especially in terms of performance in inputting election results data. If you use the Blockchain system in elections, perhaps the level of transparency can be higher, meaning that once the data has been entered, it cannot be tampered with any more, just like the current performance system for digital money.

of course. Everything is in the hands of the stakeholders, if they are seen as capable of solving problems without problems, they will definitely look for ways to be more transparent, besides that now the culture of voters also prefers privacy in voting and perhaps the costs and infrastructure will also be large if integrating blockchain technology into the election system.

[DanWalker]

Blockchain is a new technology but it is not so new that politicians have never heard of it. But so far, they have no intention of including it in the voting system in elections for some reason. So it can be said that blockchain can change and bring more fairness in elections thanks to its transparency, but the problem is that they do not want and do not intend to make everything transparent and fair. 

Regarding politics, I don't think everything will just stop at vote fraud, but I think everything is planned and scripted in advance. The person who comes to power is predetermined and not based on votes as we expected. Not everyone wants fairness and transparency.

[Hewlet]

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Could blockchain technology solve this problem definitively?
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if you had made a personal research on how block chain technology could be applied in your country electoral system to make it better that what it is now, it would have been better than this.

Creating a system that allows voters monitor their entire voting process has been the desire of most nations and this has led to the use of the bivas, E voting and what have you, these are all fantastic systems that could reduce the rate of manipulation from the side of the politicians but at the end of the day, most elections are not always decentralized as it's always influenced by authorities.

[pinggoki]

It can definitely change the future of election but not the system of how we do election. Blockchain will only upgrade or elevate what the current voting system but not the system itself, it's a good way to prevent the cheating of the votes and the tampering or the addition of zombie or flying voters to the ballots thus preventing the undeserving and corrupt candidates to have a fighting chance and the vote will be fair and square. Hopefully though, it's not just the machines that we use for voting changes though, I believe that we also need to change the way we vote because in most countries, it's more on the popularity and less on merits that the candidate have, the populist way is a fighting chance for the irresponsible candidates to take on the office and waste the public funds.

[Natsuu]

Well i think using blockchain for elections could amp up security, making it harder to tamper with results. It's decentralized, which is a plus, but we'd need to weigh the pros and cons, like how user-friendly it is. Before diving in, we should check if the benefits outweigh the practical challenges.The government should work harder before actually implementing anything

[thecodebear]

I doubt blockchain is a solution for voting. While it of course technically could be used, I don't think the amazing things about blockchain really fit to the needs of an election very well.

For elections it'd have to be a centralized blockchain, and you'd have to have some way to control not only each person only having one account, but also make sure nobody can access another's account, and not have people worry about key management just to vote because you know millions of people would forget/lose their keys. With the changes needed to make it work well for the use case of voting I don't think what we'd have would be very similar to today what we think of as blockchains.

[tiCeR]

In my country, elections are held with an electronic ballot box. Many people question the effectiveness and real security of this method, which although it seems promising, brings some insecurities, as no electronic system is proof of fraud or failure.

Could blockchain technology solve this problem definitively?

Would it be a good thing to apply this technology in elections and put people's future in the hands of blockchain?

I personally believe more in the security of the blockchain than a ballot box made using technology that is subject to alteration and fraud, controlled by the government itself.

Something you feed into the blockchain can never be changed afterwards, but the real problem is that you can't ever guarantee that what is fed into the blockchain is bullet-proof in the first place. But the blockchain isn't to be blamed for that. For as long as you can interfere with either the bridge (a centralized server or digital box as you said) between a person casting a vote and the blockchain, the data might be tampered with.

But there are other examples that the blockchain can't solve. How do you make sure that a voter truthfully casts a vote for something that the person believes in or - without any external manipulation - deems to be the right vote? If the idea is to get the most correct elections possible, there is a ton of things that need to be solved.

• Disinformation
• Bribery
• Coercion
• etc...

So even if you solve the problem of fake ID's submitting a vote or wrong counting or multiple submissions by the same ID or removed/destroyed/lost submissions, you can never guarantee that all as per the blockchain valid submissions come from a person that has not been bribed, not been manipulated or coerced, or anything else that comes to your mind which could interfere with that person's free will and opinion. Some problems can be solved with the blockchain in election processes, but by now I more and more get the feeling that the real problems like AI manipulation and disinformation aren't among those solvable problems.