Blockchain Voting

No matter which candidate you voted for in the recent US election, you should be upset at the way votes are cast and counted.  Constitutional Republics need certain things to thrive and sustain themselves.  Fair and transparent elections without fraud is one of them

I come from Illinois.  The Democratic Machine in Chicago has institutionalized fraud into the election process.  As an election judge, when someone showed up and the signature didn’t match, legally you had to let them vote.

Republicans do not trust Democrats, and Democrats do not trust Republicans.  We hear about 123k votes for one candidate, or bags of mail in votes being found and everyone is suspect.

Across the country, people were given Sharpies to vote and it screwed up ballot counting.  You might recall in 2000 we had “hanging chads” with punch through ballots.  Having a secure digital process would eliminate a lot of havoc.  Critics of that process have pointed to voting machines being pre-programmed and they are right to cast a critical eye on any digital process.  However, blockchain provides an avenue to do it.

One of the hard things about voting in elections is that each of the fifty states has its own law around registering, distributing, collecting, and casting ballots.   From a national perspective, I think the country can offer up best practices which should harmonize the rules.

First Principles:

First, every single state has to clean up its voter rolls.  Dead people have voted a lot in Illinois and we are hearing reports that it happened in Michigan last Tuesday.  You cannot have free and fair elections without squeaky clean voter rolls.

Second, only citizens over the age of 18 can vote.  No immigrants.  No illegals. Those citizens have to register.  Voting is not passive.  It’s active.

Third, same-day registration invites fraud.  It should be illegal.  In order to have an orderly counting process, states ought to know what their registration is a month ahead of time.  We know statistically what turnout is.  It helps states staff and deal with the operational challenges of counting votes.  Sorry, if you are too lazy to register, you don’t get to vote.  It’s an active process performed by citizens.

Fourth, ballots have to be cast on or by Election Day. Voting also shouldn’t take place for a month. A couple of weeks ahead of election day ought to do it.  Because we are beholden to an unverified or at least sloppily verified process, we are stuck with a long drawn out process.  A digital process would change that significantly.

So, how do you do it?

Blockchain provides a solution provided we implement it correctly.  It’s immutable and verifiable.  Very tough to change, and almost fraud-proof as long as the inputs are clean and fraud free.

Each citizen who registers to vote gets a unique code.  We do it with Social Security numbers so this is not difficult.  That code stays with them for the rest of their lives.  When they die, as soon as their death certificate is recorded it is extinguished.

When you move from area to area, a digital registration can move with you.  Delete from one voter roll and get added to another.  Use your code to verify the change.  For example, if I had a digital code when I moved from Illinois to Nevada, I could have used that code to register in Nevada.  I could have updated my address, and taken a photo of a document that proved my new residency.

The code you are given can only be used once.  Once you vote in person, off of your computer, or off of your phone/tablet, the code is recorded and cannot be called back.  It cannot be duplicated.  As soon as you vote, it would show on the voter roll so that if someone tried to be an imposter they’d be found right away.  Hopefully arrested right away too.

Digital voting means if I am out of the country, I don’t have to worry about whether my ballot gets there on time or not.  I am not subject to the randomness of the post office.

This is something that needs to happen before the next Presidential election.

The post Blockchain Voting first appeared on Points and Figures.