Research deems blockchain-based voting system disastrous

“Thanks to blockchain technology, it is now possible to build an inclusive, scalable, and workable voting system,” these were recent remarks by Blockchain research institute co-founder, Alex Tapscott. The advent of Blockchain technology has been met with a lot of enthusiasm. So much has been expected of the technology especially from the electoral system, a blockchain-based voting system.

Election security experts have had a different opinion about the technology terming it a massive failure. These reports follow an experiment done by a blockchain-based mobile voting company at West Virginia in August 2018.

According to the experiment, a voting system based on blockchain technology would be disastrous. This is said to be so because a blockchain based voting system would greatly affect the integrity of the elections. The experiment reports further claim that Blockchain technology would make it easy for foreign governments to interfere and tamper with essential cryptographic algorithms.

According to the report, a blockchain based voting system would allow foreign governments to easily gain access to the voting systems. This would enable them to generate and distribute cryptographic credentials to the voters. Not only would they generate and distribute cryptographic material, but also bribe election officials to supply them with copies of voter credentials.

A blockchain based system would also allow intruders to send phishing emails to voters. They would do this with the aim of tricking voters to send their voting credentials or dupe them into thinking they have already voted when in reality they have not.

“These concerns are not alarming. A voter can always confirm whether their vote was recorded well and citizens are more than capable of proving the security of their voting tokens,” remarked Mr. Tapscott. He went on to further add, “The system has a clear chain of custody and thus rig-free.”