Free and fair elections are one of the pillars of salubrious democracies. From the United States to Sierra Leone, advocates of blockchain believe that the technology can bring a new level of transparency, fairness and efficiency to the electoral process. In spite of the enthusiasm of the blockchain customs — and tentative support from political bodies — attempts to implement the engineering science have enjoyed mixed success and have faced impassioned criticism.

Japan's scientific hub trials blockchain

In belatedly August, the Japanese city of Tsukuba trialed the utilize of blockchain applied science in its  voting system. Tsukuba is a city already closely associated with scientific research, and the contempo blockchain trial is the urban center'southward latest move to explore new ways to innovate.

Voters were able to participate by using their My Number Carte — a 12-digit ID number issued to all citizens of Japan, which was introduced in 2022.

A release published on the city's official website stated that the voters were able to bandage ballots for the implementation of unlike social programs. Participants were able to choose which of the 13 initiatives they felt were almost worthy of financial support, varying from the development of equipment to improve cancer diagnosis to a program for sound navigation in cities and new equipment for outdoor activities.

Every bit cited by Cointelegraph, the trial was conducted to found whether blockchain's autonomous and transparent properties would lend themselves well to the minimization of foul play in the voting process.

Although initially skeptical about the potential of blockchain, Tsukuba's mayor Tatsuo Ugarashi said:

"I had thought [blockchain] would involve more than complicated procedures, but I found that it's minimal and like shooting fish in a barrel."

Although Japan'south virtually contempo trial with blockchain appears to have gone smoothly, non all government efforts to capitalize on the engineering'south potential have enjoyed the aforementioned reception.

Sierra Leone: The blockchain ballot that wasn't

On March 7, 2022, it was reported that Sierra Leone had get the commencement nation to implement blockchain technology in the electoral process.

Agora Technologies, a Swiss company, published a serial of tweets stating that it had overseen Sierra Leone'due south beginning blockchain-based election:

The reality turned out to be a little different. In fact, Agora had actually been observing the voting procedure and running an entirely divide blockchain trial alongside the ballot to illustrate how future elections could be carried out using the engineering science.

The National Electoral Committee of Sierra Leone (NEC) sprang into action and published its own statement via twitter, denying that there had been whatever use of blockchain engineering science during the election:

Agora CEO, Leo Gammar, was forced to rectify Agora'due south seemingly misleadingly statements. The fact that the grouping were accredited to trial their own blockchain system aslope the election indicates that, in spite of the media frenzy, governmental bodies are opening the door to new ways of of making the electoral process more efficient — and blockchain is ane of them.

In spite of the seemingly rosy relations with Sierra Leone's NEC, reception of the company's involvement in the election has been mixed. Morris Marah, founder of the Freetown-based Sensi Tech Hub, expressed his concerns to RFI:

"What these guys [Agora] are proverb is neat. But they haven't really tested information technology considering they basically took a paper bill of fare of the results and put it on their system. That'southward what everybody else is doing, that's non new."

Switzerland's 'Crypto Valley' trials blockchain voting

In recent years, the Swiss town of Zug has become famous less for its mount views and quaint Swiss architecture, merely more for its clan with depression tax rates and cryptocurrency. The recent influx of crypto groups establishing bases in the central county has led to it being dubbed "Crypto Valley."

Keen to establish itself equally a blockchain capital, the municipality allows payment in Bitcoin for services and recently completed a successful trial of blockchain voting.

The small-scale vote involved only 72 out of the 240 citizens with access to the online voting organisation, who participated in the non-binding trial vote between June 25 and July ane. The test questionnaire asked citizens to vote on both pocket-size municipal matters as well as if they think a blockchain-based eID organisation should be used for referendum votes in the future. The Swiss News Agency writes that three people indicated that information technology was not piece of cake to vote digitally, 22 responded that they would use blockchain for taxation returns or surveys, 19 responded they would pay parking fees with their digital ID, and three said they would employ it for borrowing library books. Communications Primary for Zug, Dieter Miller, chosen the premier a success.

Due west Virginia trials blockchain voting, only clouds threaten its blue heaven thinking

Westward Virginia is set to allow citizens serving in the military — along with other citizens living abroad — to vote via smartphone with an app called Voatz in Nov 2022. This will be the first example of voting on a smartphone in a federal election.

W Virginia officials posted a PDF outlining the process:

"All that is needed to cast their vote is a uniform Apple or Android mobile device and approved, validated State or Federal ID."

The idea for the app first surfaced at a hacking summit hosted by the South past Southwest technology festival in Texas.

West Virginia Secretary of Land Mac Warner was impressed with the app's system of biometric authentication and the elements of blockchain-based security. Both Warner and the Boston-based startup that created Voatz claim the system is secure.

The country successfully carried out a pilot in May.

The contempo fanfare over blockchain applied science in voting procedures is beingness played out confronting a backdrop of scandal in relatively recent electoral history. The twelvemonth 2000 saw reports of a miscount and, in 2022, several individuals were alleged to have cast ballots in more than than i state.

A Brookings Institute report stated that the National Conference of State Legislatures has put frontwards a number of considerations needing to exist addressed for a wider-scale implementation of electronic voting — such as security, voter compulsion, authentication and the inconvenience for local officials. Although positive nearly the potential for blockchain engineering science to transform the voting process, the report concluded that blockchain needs to exist comprehensively tested to take into account the cost and scale of wider implementation.

Matt Blaze, a cryptography and security researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, voiced criticism to the report, stating that blockchain introduces weaknesses into the system. Blaze also said that securing the voting organization "is more easily, simply, and securely done with other approaches."

Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, also blasted the Voatz app, stating that it is less of a blockchain-based app and more of a standard mobile app with a blockchain attached. The key concern is that, although the app encrypts the voter's data, the current system cannot guarantee the voter's phone and service network will be gratis from vulnerabilities. With regard to the protection of sensitive information equally it travels over the net from the app, Schneider said:

"I remember they've made a lot of claims that really don't justify any increased conviction in what they are doing versus whatsoever other internet voting arrangement."

Voatz claims the criticism leveled against it is "simulated propaganda" and that "most comments in the thread are wrong or misrepresentations."

However, criticism of the app's capabilities are non entirely unfounded. A trial in Utah resulted in the startup existence unable to support a high concentration of downloads shortly before polls opened. Voatz, all the same, remained upbeat and described the incident as a "valuable learning experience."

Blockchain implementation in elections

Critics remain unimpressed

While most of the criticism for online and mobile voting has been targeted at specific flaws in programs, there are several prominent critics who disagree with the notion entirely.

Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer, computer scientist and author of several books on cryptography and computer security, published a weblog in opposition to the use of blockchain in elections.

"The simply style to reliably protect elections from both malice and accident is to use something that is not hackable or unreliable at scale; the best way to do that is to back upwardly as much of the system as possible with newspaper."

Schneier believes that past efforts to automate the voting arrangement comport a bulletin about the potential dangers of such a transformation. In 2007, the states of California and Ohio carried out comprehensive audits of their electronic voting machines. The result was far from positive. The review found that vulnerabilities were endemic throughout virtually all components:

"Researchers were able to undetectably alter vote tallies, erase inspect logs, and load malware onto the systems. Some of their attacks could exist implemented by a single individual with no greater access than a normal poll worker; others could be washed remotely."

This is not the simply instance where electronic voting machines accept been compromised. In 2022, the Defcon hackers' briefing collected 25 pieces of equipment and challenged the attendees to compromise them. By the time the weekend was over, the participants had loaded malicious software onto devices, anonymously compromised vote counts and caused the devices to crash. "These were bored hackers," writes Schneier, "with no feel with voting machines, playing around between parties i weekend."

With regard to the best solution, Schneier wrote:

"Security researchers agree that the gold standard is a voter-verified newspaper ballot. The easiest (and cheapest) way to achieve this is through optical-browse voting. Voters mark paper ballots past hand; they are fed into a automobile and counted automatically. That paper election is saved, and serves as a final, true record in a recount in case of bug. Touch-screen machines that print a paper election to drop in a ballot box tin can also work for voters with disabilities, every bit long as the ballot tin be easily read and verified past the voter."

The most scathing criticism for the concept comes from the Center for Democracy and Applied science's Joseph Lorenzo Hall, who calls the whole matter a "horrific thought":

"It's internet voting on people's horribly secured devices, over our horrible networks, to servers that are very difficult to secure without a physical paper record of the vote."

However, this barrage of criticism does not seem to take deterred governments from seeking to implement the engineering in the near future. By now, we can talk only about the municipal, not national experiments, but given they were held in the U.S., Japan and Switzerland, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to acknowledge a certain interest in DLT from the world's leading democracies.