Elections in the blockchain: whether the vote without ballot box stuffing and fraud?

The past elections showed a fairly predictable result, but the protest-minded part of society still remained dissatisfied. Could this have been avoided?

18 March, Russia held its presidential elections. Despite numerous suggestions to use blockchain to ensure maximum transparency and avoid falsification of voting results, this year the CEC decided to do with the old tried and tested methods, relying on observers and video recording system. Even before the end of voting in the social network began to receive reports of violations on the ground. But would it be possible to avoid them by using blockchain technology not only to calculate the results of exit polls?

To begin with, it must be recognized that modern elections have become overgrown with many problems that are gradually undermining their credibility as a truly democratic instrument. Here is the problem of the trust of the electorate in candidates in particular and the legitimacy of elections in General, and outdated methods of collecting, processing and storing votes, and the lack of proper control, and numerous violations detected in almost every election. Let us omit what dirty tricks are sometimes used in the election race and how the predictability of results and distrust of the voting system replaces the active civic position of the majority of citizens with political apathy. Regardless of how legitimate is the victory of a candidate, all of the above is enough to cause mistrust and discontent among voters, and doubt about the legitimacy of the elections undermines the very principle of a social contract between the government and society.

The Russian authorities, like their colleagues from other countries, have been trying for a long time to legalize the election process as much as possible, but any fact of violations in the conditions of internetization of society immediately becomes the property of social networks, and neither video cameras nor observers help to increase confidence in the "people's will".

Meanwhile, many issues could be closed if the voting process were transferred to the blockchain.Similar proposals were made throughout the election race. So, Boris Titov in April of last year suggested that the registration of voting results on the blockchain will close the possibility of vote rigging and manipulation in the elections-however, then the development and testing of the platform, which was carried out in the Growth Party, remained without due attention of the Central election Commission.

With a similar proposal in the fall of 2017 was made by a well-known businessman Sergey Polonsky. "We are now working on the project – the creation of a voting system based on blockchain... moreover, we have already planned that in 2018 in parallel with the elections that go to homegrown, where it is necessary to come and fill in, we run a system where every person can absolutely Autonomous through the blockchain, via the Internet, to vote, and this vote will be verified", – said in November the businessman in an interview with radio "Moscow Says".

Alas, his initiative also did not find enough supporters and response to the CEC, and the infamous businessman, despite an attempt to run for President, came across an irresistible obstacle in the form of a criminal record for fraud, which came out of the election race both him and Alexei Navalny.

The presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, who in December published a message in her Instagram, in which the CEC offered to take note of the idea of voting through the e-Chat-Hong Kong messenger, which allows voting by transferring personal electronic tokens of voters to the digital wallets of candidates, also called for the introduction of blockchain voting. Later, the company E – Chat International directly offered to introduce its technology to the Chairman of the Central election Commission of the Russian Federation Ella Pamfilova, however, given that it was in February – just a month before the election-it is clear that the real implementation of such technology would not have time to produce, so this proposal should be considered only as an attempt to "illuminate" the product through a loud theme.

Nevertheless, from 15 to 18 March, there were still "parallel" elections on the blockchain – however, only schoolchildren who, due to age, are not yet able to participate in the political life of the country. Instead, they were able to vote through the Internet in a referendum on the duration of the school week. The counting of votes for the "five-day" or "six-day" is carried out with the help of the latest blockchain system, but the results have not yet been announced.

In addition – and this is, in fact, a great achievement-the technology has been used in the work of observers who monitor the integrity of the elections. The blockchain allowed to exclude the human factor from the formation of an objective picture of the voting as much as possible – all the data of the protocols of the polling stations, information about violations, data on the results of voting on the ground were entered into the blockchain system Verifier, which from the moment of entering the information does not allow to change it in the process of transmission from the observer to the final viewer who wants to get acquainted with the elections through the national public monitoring portal.

"Thanks to the blockchain and the fact that all protocols from polling stations are put into the database, it becomes impossible to replace information – you can always check and compare data on the protocols," – said the Federal coordinator of the "National public monitoring", the co-Chairman of the movement "Russia chooses" Elena Babchenkova.
And the head of the program "Political management" of the faculty of political science of Moscow state University Sergey Volodenkov noted that this is only the first growth point, and if such a block chain-based platforms is few, they will allow you to verify the entire election process and make the CEC in fact unnecessary.

What about other countries?
The first successful experience of presidential elections on the blockchain already exists-on March 7, the technology was used in the calculation of voting results in Sierra Leone. In the recent round of elections have taken part about 70% of the citizens of African States. The technology of voting on blockchain was presented by Agora startup, according to which representatives, the process was completely announced.

Nevertheless, the records of each vote have been kept in the blockchain, and after the elections will be available for download and study by everyone – this has made the process honest, open and fully verifiable, as well as reduce the cost of organizing the elections by eliminating paper ballots. The details and outcome of the elections have not yet been disclosed, as the final round should take place only on 27 March.

The prospect of transferring the democratic process to the blockchain has long been considered in other countries. In the United States and Europe, there is a parallel work of a number of startups on a variety of likely solutions, but the active introduction of speech is not yet. However, back in 2015, the United States proposed replacing outdated American voting machines with new models based on blockchain technology. On this problem, in particular, the company Blockchain Technologies, which implied such an order of action: on election day, voters routinely fill out a ballot paper equipped with a unique cryptographic number ID for voting in the form of a QR-code. The latter is scanned by the machine, which transfers the blocks in favor of the corresponding candidate. The software was successfully tested in the election of candidates for intra-party positions in Texas. However, in the election of the US President in 2016, the blockchain machines decided not to use, which is likely to now regret supporters of then losing Hillary Clinton.

The blockchain, meanwhile, has long been actively used in politics, for example, for intra-party voting. One of the first such concepts was the initiative of the Danish party Liberal Alliance, which in 2014 proposed to use the technology of distributed registers for internal voting at the annual meeting of party members.

What are the services?
Since 2016, a group of activists has been developing a blockchain service for e-vox voting in Kyiv based on the Ethereum platform. The system is designed to ensure transparency of voting results at all levels — from municipal elections to the election of parliamentarians. The developer of the system was the company Ambisafe, noting as the main advantage of its service, the absence of intermediaries that could potentially affect the results of the elections. Thus, the results of voting are open and can be used by state bodies for strategic decision-making.

Also successfully passed the test of blockchain voting system e-voting in Estonia. In 2016, it was developed in partnership with the Estonian e-citizenship e-Residency platform and launched as an experiment at the NASDAQ Tallinn Stock Exchange to facilitate the voting of shareholders.
What are the services?
Since 2016, a group of activists has been developing a blockchain service for e-vox voting in Kyiv based on the Ethereum platform. The system is designed to ensure transparency of voting results at all levels — from municipal elections to the election of parliamentarians. The developer of the system was the company Ambisafe, noting as the main advantage of its service, the absence of intermediaries that could potentially affect the results of the elections. Thus, the results of voting are open and can be used by state bodies for strategic decision-making.

Also successfully passed the test of blockchain voting system e-voting in Estonia. In 2016, it was developed in partnership with the Estonian e-citizenship e-Residency platform and launched as an experiment at the NASDAQ Tallinn Stock Exchange to facilitate the voting of shareholders.

Meanwhile, the Russian it giant Kaspersky Lab, in cooperation with the British blockchain company Parity Technologies, presented its own development, the Polys voting system, in November. The innovative e-voting platform, which uses encryption and the advantages of Ethereum smart contracts to ensure the transparency and security of the process, was unveiled in Dublin in November. Ethereum smart contracts, which are the basis of The product, provide distributed processing of votes and allow each user to check the correctness of the recording of his will. In addition, all voting data is stored not on centralized servers, but in information blocks on the devices of all participants of the process, which protects the system from hacking. As an additional security measure, Polys blockchain is encrypted with mathematical algorithms that provide anonymity of voting and allow hiding intermediate results. The platform can be adapted to the needs of any particular organization or community, but the developers ' plans to apply it in a political vote are not yet known.

When should we expect a vote on the blockchain in Russia?
Electronic voting blockchain would solve a lot of problems that prevent people to Express their political preferences in a legitimate way. First, this is a substantial savings of time and administrative resource – now for the vote involved a huge amount of people, some of which organize voting in areas while others watch, that first did everything right. Secondly, the removal of bureaucracy, which often makes voting outside the place of residence a great headache voters.

However, there are many obstacles to the introduction of blockchain into the Russian electoral system. And the most obvious of them may be that many potential voters, especially those of old age, may find it difficult to learn a new method of voting. The digital divide, alas, clearly divides society into two disproportionate parts, leaving the latest technologies a privilege of a rather small handful of the urban population. In light of this reasonable offer looks the same Boris Titov at first to use the blockchain as a "backup" system, but it makes its use quite meaningless in practical terms. While some voters will cast their votes through blockchain transactions, the likelihood of fraud in the "paper" part of the ballots will nullify all the openness, transparency and immutability that technology supporters hope for.

In addition, by registering each voter in the network under a unique identifier, the blockchain allows to solve such a problem as repeated voting on the absentee ballot, but nothing can be done with the forced appearance of the public sector, forced voting in some institutions and other similar claims, which are usually criticized by the existing electoral system. The human factor and pressure remains a powerful tool in the fight for power and coveted figures, while to catch the hand of law breakers, from the official zeal of organizing the turnout and the "right" vote, it is very difficult – with the help of new technologies, without them.

Finally, the main obstacle to why blockchain voting was not even seriously considered as an option for the 2018 elections is the unclear status of new technologies in Russian legislation. The final decision on this issue should be made in the summer of this year, but the competing bills of different agencies are still in the stage of elaboration, and it is too early to speak about the final legalization of blockchain technology – due to its novelty it is in the "gray" regulatory zone.

Nevertheless, a number of public and government organizations are seriously considering the use of blockchain for voting, developing their own platforms. At the most, by the end of this year, the status of technology in Russia will become clear, and then it will be possible to talk about a long – term program of modernization of the national will system. By the next Presidential election, which will take place in 6 years in 2024, of course, much can change – from the emergence of new breakthrough technologies to the adoption of new conservative laws. However, the possibility of using blockchain in local and parliamentary elections is quite possible and even natural development of events.