Nathaniel Williams: digital voting is coming. Let’s do it right.

As I wrote this, all of the United States waited with bated breath to learn the results of the 2020 general election. Although former Vice President Joe Biden was elected, with a remarkable dissenting opinion – I have no way of knowing if my ballot has been counted or declared “fraudulent” and rejected. What matters.

Voter intimidation, closed polling stations, fears of lost and late ballots and allegations of voter fraud were reported last week. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented levels of postal voting, a method that is safe but relies on infrastructure that is already defunded and widespread. All of these problems add up to the usual low turnout numbers and the legacy of voter crackdown in the United States

The chaos surrounding the 2020 election has exposed cracks in the state of US democracy. While much of this uncertainty stems from broader social and political issues, at least some errors can be attributed to the way the elections themselves took place.

This election made it clear: 19th century voting methods are unable to adequately express the will of such a large, diverse and fragmented population. We need a better way to make decisions.

What if we had a system where everyone could vote from their mobile phone and open a browser to check the results of an election, all without having to trust whatever central authority?

This system would allow civic participation to radically change as confidence in collective decision-making grows and barriers to direct democracy are reduced. Many of the problems facing elections today, from poor security to voter turnout and beyond, could be improved – if not completely solved – through blockchain voting.

An increasing number of people are starting to see digital voting as a valuable path to regaining public trust. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discussed the matter recently.

Despite a number of challenges, digital voting appears to be an inevitable path for many countries. So rather than holding back in the hope that it will never be implemented, we should face these challenges. The technologies behind cutting-edge cryptocurrencies have already been theorized to solve many of these problems, so they’re a good place to start.

There are a few reasons to be skeptical of our ability to host safe and secure digital elections – countless pieces have been written on this topic. One of the most notable was YouTuber Tom Scott. As he explains, the main problem with voting can be summed up as a dilemma between two seemingly opposite properties: anonymity and trust.

The only way to have full confidence in the integrity of a system without relying on any authority is for it to be end-to-end verifiable, accessible and transparent to everyone. But how is this even possible if the votes must be anonymous?

Since the origins of the blockchain, it has been speculated that the technology could be used for voting. However, we have yet to see such a solution implemented.

Many projects claim to use blockchain for voting, but most only use it as a mechanism to publish votes collected and processed by another system. These claims are misleading, this use of the blockchain does not solve the fundamental problems of digital voting. Votes can still be manipulated until the time they are posted.

See Also: “Snake Oil and Overpriced Junk”: Why Blockchain Doesn’t Solve Online Voting

To offer end-to-end verifiability, a blockchain voting system must allow ballots to be cast directly on the blockchain. Under this scheme, any voter can guarantee that their vote has been counted. Additionally, auditors can verify the integrity of the system from start to finish.

A blockchain voting system could ensure that no votes are lost or changed in transit. Due to the open and distributed nature of blockchains, such a system is highly resilient to DDoS attacks and lacks a centralized backend that could misbehave or be infected with malware. And in particular, the results will be available as soon as the elections are over.

The blockchain’s extraordinary transparency also limits its ability to provide privacy for digital voting.

A blockchain is a perfect structure for recording and guaranteeing data integrity, but it also allows you to trace the origins of this data. An anonymous voting system should separate transactions (ballots) from their origins. Enter zk-SNARKs.

See also: George Samman – The Trend Towards Blockchain Privacy: Zero Knowledge Proofs

A zk-SNARK is a state-of-the-art crypto-proof construction that provides us with the ability to prove possession of certain private information, without revealing this information. Applied to voting, a zk-SNARK circuit could allow a voter to prove that they belong to a census and are able to vote, all without revealing their identity or allowing others to trace their vote.

This could be achieved by creating a “census” of participants’ public keys and using zk-SNARK so that voters can prove they belong without revealing those keys. A more detailed account for this model can be found here.

We can then create a voting-specific blockchain where, instead of paying a commission, you can post transactions after proving you belong to the census by generating a zero knowledge proof.

This is an amazing construct; it almost feels like magic. We now have a ballot paper that has no signature and therefore cannot be traced to an address, along with proof that allows this ballot to be included in a fully end-to-end verifiable blockchain. Also, the voter has to pay for any gas or tax, so no tokens are involved.

Strong public blockchains are inherently resistant to censorship attacks, but vote buying and corruption are also significant concerns.

If voters were forced to, it would be possible for them to cancel their votes later, without fear of double spending. And there are some clever tricks that make buying votes impractical by allowing anyone to produce valid proof for any vote once the election has closed.

The solution does not begin and end in blockchain, nor is it just technological. There are several challenges with digital voting and elections, such as universal accessibility and authentication, which require government involvement and lack simple technological solutions.

See also: Gregory Magarshak – In Defense of Blockchain Voting

But these are issues that can be addressed and repeated with pilot projects and investments in better authentication mechanisms. The Achilles heel of this voting system is the user’s client app (equivalent to a crypto wallet). Trust in the operating system and implementation of the app would probably be required.

The first compelling examples of such a solution are starting to appear. I was exposed to the possibility of blockchain voting while working on Vocdoni Open Stack, an open-source project that has been dedicated to deconstructing the decentralized voting problem for the past three years.

We have designed a protocol and a series of libraries that are bringing radical new solutions to what has been an unsolved problem until now. A reliable, end-to-end, verifiable and anonymous voting system. Our technology infrastructure is publicly available here and has already been successfully tested with dozens of organizations, including the largest cultural organization in Europe with nearly 200,000 voters.

It is a mistake to think that you can get the perfect digital voting system, as 100% security will never exist. This is also the case with the physical vote. But now we can build voting systems that provide our digital society with guarantees equal to or greater than those presented by physical voting.