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DEMOCRATIC VOTING AND BLOCKCHAIN
Functioning democracies and shareholder meetings rely upon accurate, reliable vote counts. But what happens when voters can’t show up? According to French media reports, France postponed the second round of mayoral elections for French cities, following a recommendation from Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, due to the heightened risk of coronavirus following a tripling of new cases in just three days. Consequently, France registered the lowest participation rate in history. This could well be a necessary measure as votes could quite easily be swayed or manipulated if 95% of voters chose to stay home. Many consider it their moral duty to fulfil their democratic right. Drew Hinkes, a crypto attorney with Carlton Fields, is one of those people. “Based on what we're hearing from scientists and specialists, it is smart to take precautions,” Hinkes said. “But still, there are some forms of public engagement that take precedence over public health, namely, the health of our democracy.“I do feel strongly that as Americans, we should vote while it's still safe to do so,” he continued.
So what if we could vote securely from home? Blockchain technology would enable the French, and others, to continue the vote in an even more efficient manner than usual, while maintaining security, integrity and democracy. What’s more, secure voting via a Blockchain could play a key role in shareholder meetings where votes must be placed and reliably counted. This would provide a quick and efficient way for shareholder decisions to be made. Back in 2016, Jeremy Clark and Aleksander Essex foresaw the potential for Blockchain in voting. As computer scientists in separate universities in Ontario, Canada, they created a method they called CommitCoin. CommitCoin provided a way to use a Blockchain to let anyone vote from anywhere in an official election. Most importantly, each recorded vote cannot be tampered with. That means no politician, party, or election official could ever possibly even dream of changing the vote. As part of the ‘trustless’ revolution, Clark said, “CommitCoin allows you to not trust anyone.” BitCongress is another example of a company using Blockchain technology to improve the voting system of governments and boardrooms. BitCongress uses a tokenised system that matches one person with one unchangeable vote. Each vote is permanently recorded and is designed to guarantee that vote manipulation is impossible — as is vote duplication. However, not everyone is convinced.
New research from a team of MIT engineers discovered a disturbing number of significant vulnerabilities in one of the voting systems at the forefront of the Blockchain movement, called Voatz. Created with the purpose of providing a replacement for absentee ballots, Voatz’s Blockchain-based voting project has been funded with more than $9 million from Venture Capitalists. Using the Voatz app, users could vote remotely, verifying their identity through the phone’s facial recognition software. The app has been trialled in minor US elections, including the 2018 general election in West Virginia. Whilst the MIT team of engineers believed vote manipulation could still be possible, Blockchain enthusiasts argue that distributed ledger technology makes this unlikely. Whatever the truth, allowing users to vote via their mobile phone, from wherever they are in the world removes friction from the voting process. By making it easier to vote, democratic elections will see a higher turnout, and boardrooms will find it easier to collect votes from shareholder meetings. If your organisation holds shareholder meetings, a Blockchain-based voting application could help you reliable count votes, without worrying about vote manipulation.