ELECTRONIC VOTING

But it’s not just the financial sector feeling the blockchain blowtorch — it’s even being touted as a solution for e-voting. The recent closely-fought federal election in Australia saw many call for the introduction of electronic voting. The expectation is that e-voting will speed up vote-counting and the declaration of seat winners, but also reduce waiting times for voters at the polling booths. Not only has Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull thrown his support behind it, so too have academics, including the Director of University of Western Australia’s Centre for Software Practice.

However, within government circles, e-voting has generally been considered fraught with complications, not least of these being privacy and security. Various Australian Government inquiries have looked at electronic voting since 2000, when a small delegation from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) headed to the US to witness e-voting during the then US presidential election. The following year, the AEC itself produced a report into e-voting, noting the major advantages, including instantaneous calculating of results and the ability for any voter to vote anywhere in the country. But it also outlined the disadvantages, from cost of computer hardware needed at each polling station to the lack of a paper trail of ballots, potentially raising “unacceptable risks” ( www.aec.gov.au/ voting/report.htm).

More recently, the second interim report of the parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the 2013 federal election investigated options for e-voting. It noted that the main concerns were the security, integrity and transparency of the system, along with cost and the system’s ability to maintain vote secrecy and engender voter confidence ( tinyurl.com/apc437report). The final report of the 2013 election concluded in its introduction that “to introduce large-scale electronic voting in the near future would dangerously compromise federal electoral integrity” ( tinyurl.com/ apc437-final).

Read online forums and you’ll find responses to the idea of e-voting range from enthusiasm to acceptance, caution to suspicion. As some argue, the fact that we still scrawl markings on sheets of paper makes our voting system robust and much more difficult to hack, as multiple scrutineers check the counting of each vote. In the end, it might be slow and labourious, but it’s considered accurate and trustworthy.

AUSSIE START-UPS

However, blockchain transactions are considered extremely difficult to hack, they remain forever and can be viewed by anyone, which means blockchain could solve the problem of waiting for weeks for an election outcome.

Perth-based veri.vote ( veri.vote) is one Australian startup in the race against teams from the US to deliver e-voting technology based on blockchain storage. According to its website, veri.vote is aiming for a system that is efficient in resources, secured through blockchain technology, completely anonymous and uses open-source software and protocols to allow anyone to view an election result.

Still, there are many questions that remain unanswered about how e-voting would work in practice, from vote-taking to vote-counting to vote verification processes that ensure computers don’t muck things up.

Then there’s protecting voter anonymity, something enshrined in Australian electoral laws. We suspect it’ll take a bit more than just someone from the AEC or government of the day coming out and saying that e-voting is perfectly anonymous to convince voters. Acceptance may even come down along generational lines, with younger ‘digital-native’ voters possibly more likely to accept e-voting than older voters.

SECURING THE FUTURE?

Blockchain is viewed as having real potential for solving some of the internet’s greatest security and privacy concerns — from financial transactions to electronic voting. But it’s very early days, and while testing is progressing, blockchain still has a long way to go before its running global banking and democratic elections. That’s reason enough for us to keep a lid on expectations for a little while yet.