Digital elections can solve problems with queues and boost voter turnout. Why are we not using blockchain technology for national elections?
Sweden recently had a national election and reports suggest that some districts experienced long queues due to new voting procedures in polling stations. The ballot papers were placed in a booth to increase privacy, but this led to increased queues. The Swedish Election Government (Valmyndigheten) also claimed that the participation rate experienced a downturn.
Democracies perform better when more people vote, and we need to use technology to make the voting process more effective.
The pandemic showed the world that we need to look at different ways to organize important democratic events. For a democratic society to function properly, people need to be able to vote regardless of the situation a country is in. War or peace. We therefore need to use technology in the best possible way to decrease the risk of elections frauds world-wide and to increase voting participation. Is blockchain technology the out of the box solution?
According to research blockchain technology can be used for elections. Blockchain technology can be used to decrease the risk of fraud by decreasing human involvement in the voting process. By using an electronic voting system people will have a secure and easy way to vote without leaving home, but is blockchain technology ready to be used for a national election?
I was given the opportunity to work in the Swedish election and experienced the problems of manually handling ballots. Each ballot had to be handled according to strict guidelines to ensure a secure, anonymous, and trustworthy voting process. I was surprised to see that each ballot is still manually counted. We often had to recount the votes several times since they did not always match the voting registry. The counting process was time consuming and votes from abroad needed to arrive before national results could be presented. It was an honour to serve the Swedish democracy, but I wonder why we are still using old school ways of voting.
Research show that blockchain technology is not enough for national elections. One problem is that the blockchain stores data in such a way that a national election will be too large for the blockchain if privacy is essential in the election. Currently, blockchain technology can only be used in elections where votes are only counted without being verified. In short. Using blockchain technology gets tricky as soon as we need to know that our individual votes have been counted but without showing who we voted for. Solving this technological puzzle takes time. The blockchain expert and creator of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson has predicted that we need 3–5 years before the blockchain technology may be ready to be used in a national election.
The crypto space is eager to talk about the potential of using blockchain technology to solve major problems with election fraud in developing nations. But clearly blockchain technology needs to develop further before it can be used in national elections. Sweden will likely stick to its remarkably transparent voting system for many years to come as people have a high degree of trust in government organisations and the traditional voting system. Technology will take a bigger role if that trust is broken.