As Americans Lose Trust In The Electoral Process, Why Not Make The Vote Trustless?

The shockwaves from the 2020 presidential election continue to reverberate across the U.S. political spectrum, with a majority of Republican voters still believing that the White House contest has been rigged. This belief stems from many contentious claims of violations, including votes cast by dead people, illegal immigrants, or even by the same person, but multiple times.

On the other end of the political divide, the lament for electoral integrity also exists, albeit, for different reasons. Democrats accused the GOP of suppressing votes by creating hurdles for Americans willing to register to vote or cast their ballots.

Foreign meddling is yet another concern that repeatedly arose in the debates leading up to the elections. In October 2020, the FBI released a news bulletin warning of ongoing Russian cyberattacks on government systems, including those handling the elections. Even though the Bureau did not find any hints that the electoral data may have been compromised, the announcement was still concerning.

This speculation and its related torrent of dual-sided politicking have resulted in an extreme polarisation of a process that is otherwise fundamental for a functioning democracy. If politicians had reallocated even an ounce of their fervor from bitter clashes and firebrand soundbites into generating a solution, they would have found that all of the tools to build an accessible and secure voting system were already at hand.

The solution lies in blockchain and high-tech identity management tools, and here’s what this would look like.

Lights, camera, action

Voter ID laws emerged as a key point of contention in the discussions around the 2020 election, with a considerable number of Americans holding no government-issued ID documents. While ID requirements vary state by state, some 35 states require some form of ID at the polling station. In and of itself, this does not cover the entire 40 million Americans who did not register to vote despite being eligible to do so; but it is clearly one of the hurdles holding them back from legally registering.

The registration process can be simplified by using biometric data to register voters. All one would need is a phone camera as the vehicle. This simplifies the process and makes it more accessible, given 97 percent of U.S. citizens own a standard cell phone, and 95 percent of 18-49 year-olds own a smartphone. For those who don’t have a phone, public facilities such as post offices could set up tablets to register.

Using this biometric data, we can create a pseudonymous digital identity for the user, but compliance with state ID laws requires more safeguards in place to make a uniform process to prove residency and citizenship. The current rules include a variety of options: in states like Georgia and Indiana, a voter must present a valid photo ID or use a provisional ballot, while in Utah, a no-photo ID works just fine, with an affidavit to be signed if no ID is presented.

The solution is to sync registration with more state and federal databases to expand the system’s verification capabilities. A driver’s license scan is certain to work, but for those who do not have one, a utility bill or another foundational identity document that can be linked with a larger paper trail could be an option. The simple reality is that Americans are currently present on multiple databases, and any combination of these could be used as the oracle within our system.

The identity created on registration with the biometric data would be used as a cryptographic building block for what will effectively work as a private key for signing off the vote from the polling station. To cast their ballot, the user would need to go through an on-site biometric check and receive a PIN code, which would become the other building block. The tokenized vote would be put on the blockchain, a decentralized ledger, leading us to the next advantage of the system—its transparency.

A transparent anonymity

Blockchains are by design auditable and transparent. This means that multiple authorized parties can search or query its records and trace every token—or, in this case, a vote—thereby achieving the necessary checks and balances with accountability and oversight. Furthermore, the system naturally prevents the same individual from casting multiple votes, as biometric data is unique for every person.

While the system is easy to audit, it is also simultaneously built to the highest standards of privacy. The vote can be traced to the digital identity, but the identity itself would not point at a specific person. In other words, one can identify a verified, real, registered voter, but not establish their profile, as the identity does not contain any personal data, be it the voter’s name, address, gender, or affiliations.

A further safeguard against election tampering is in blockchain’s own design. A blockchain is built to be immutable, meaning that all data added cannot be retroactively changed. If the information in one block is altered, the entry becomes invalid. This adds an extra layer of security to the system, and leads us to its third key benefit that it brings to the table.

If it hadn’t been for these meddling kids...

Blockchain’s decentralized nature makes it a tough nut for any hacker to crack. The dataset is distributed across multiple nodes, which prevents a central point of failure. The nodes themselves would be deployed within U.S. territory and distributed across multiple states and municipalities.

This architecture would ensure that the system is decentralized in both its infrastructure and software architecture. An adversary may go after individual nodes, or even devices, but such attacks are unlikely to make enough of an impact to change the outcome of the vote. As for large-scale attacks, the decentralized design makes them nearly impossible to orchestrate.

An example for the world to follow

With the implementation of a new solution built on these principles, leveraging tokenized voting and wallet-like digital identities, one can begin to explore new voting methods and tools. An experiment with quadratic voting could be on the cards, for instance, providing voters a number of voter credits that they can spread over multiple options to showcase their voting preferences. Something along these lines is already in play in New York, where state residents can vote for several candidates in certain local elections, ranking them by preference.

As voter suppression and electoral fraud continue to be a hot-button issue in the U.S., it is time for the nation to embrace novel ways of overcoming political divides and constraints, by innovating—tapping the novel and high-tech. The resulting solutions could not only serve to quell the groundswell of political partisanship but could also become the new paragon for the world, ushering in a paradigm shift toward fairer, more unified, efficient, and transparent elections.

About the Author Bob Reid is the current CEO and Co-Founder of Everest, a fintech company that leverages blockchain technologies for a more secure and inclusive multi-currency account, digital/biometric identity, payment platform, and eMoney platform. As a licensed and registered financial institution, Everest supplies end-to-end financial solutions, facilitating eKYC/AML, digital identity, and regulatory compliance associated with money movement. He was an advisor to Kai Labs, the General Manager of Licensing at Bittorrent, and VP of Strategy & Business Development at Neulion and DivX.