Every single year, we hear about the efficacy and validity of Voting machines and the questions on the possible rigging of these machines. The Election Commission of India has proven time and time again that these voting machines are non-hackable even in the last General Election in 2019. The Supreme Court on November 3, 2023 had observed that, use of better cross checking than the current Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail(VVPAT) would be a great addition. However, there is reason to verify the functioning of these voting machines and our democracy itself, as trust on them keeps our country stable politically and eventually economically.
There have been cases in multiple countries, where elections were questioned. The 2000 election for the United States of America President was one of the most controversial elections in history. It came down to Florida, where the state Election Commission found out that the voting machines used in some counties having punch-hole voting machines and some were partially punched leading to ‘hanging Chads’ and Bush won the Presidency with a razor thin margin. This shows that pure voter trails can lead to flaws. However, machines that rely on internet connectivity, is even more susceptible to hacking and shutdowns causing an entire failure of the system. Now the question is, how do we ensure that these situations can be resolved.
This is where the blockchain technology comes in. Blockchain technology stores data in a decentralized manner with each unit consisting of many blocks. In elections, how the system could work is in two methods. Each block itself has a hash or fingerprint, the data or the candidate you vote for, and the previous block’s fingerprint. So if one block data gets tampered, its fingerprint would change subsequently causing all other blocks to change its fingerprint. This is why it is nearly impossible to tamper with another block. The second method is using a private and public key. When you do the voting you use your public key and private key. The public key will be shown to the network, and hence verifying the person’s identity on who they voted for. If there are tampering data transfers, then the data miners, as they are called, have to come to a majority consensus and tell that there should not be any tampering of the vote. The private key can be used by the person during counting day in a secure platform for the user to know if the vote they have casted is the correct candidate.
As mentioned earlier, the blockchain works on a decentralized system, meaning there would be no central authority controlling it. This makes cyber attacks launched by hackers, less possible as they have to target multiple individual node computers instead of one single system. Another feature that works for blockchain is that the fingerprints, public keys and private keys are all encrypted giving more security and safety.
Interestingly, Sierra Leone was the first country to successfully conduct its election entirely using blockchain in 2018. The benefits they saw were cost of the process reduced, the transparency of the system and an authenticity to the whole system. However as impressive as it is, experts have still warned about the true integrity of the network itself, there is a core issue of blockchain itself. The blockchain is as strong if there a high number of system miner nodes to ensure that consensus. Interfere with enough nodes, for a small system or worse a shutdown of the whole network could be catastrophic of the entire process. This is something that needs to researched over, to ensure the network security and enhancements of privacy to ensure that it would create a safer elections for everyone.
FACE Bengaluru
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
