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South Korea will test a new blockchain voting system this month, confirmed sources close to developments Bitcoin Magazine. Developed by the country's National Election Commission (NEC) and the Ministry of Science and ICT, the distributed accounting system is based on the IBM Hyperledger Fabric and will be used to authenticate voters and save voting results in real time.
South Korean officials believe that a blockchain voting system will increase both security and transparency, thus enhancing people's confidence in digital voting. The NEC initially ran an online voting system dubbed "K-voting" in 2013, but despite 5,664 million users, trust remained low due to fraud and hacking issues.
The system will be tested in the private sector by Handysoft Consortium, which provides collaboration systems for smart work environments. The NEC states that the study is a pilot test designed to determine the viability of blockchain technology, in which a small sample of users will use the pilot to answer a questionnaire.
With the pilot, the voting system will be used to collect responses from surveys issued by the Korea Security and Internet Agency – the official watchdog of the region – on the user experience, including satisfaction among participants in the experimentation. Their personal information is then collected by the user group administrator and uploaded directly to the blockchain system, where they are stored for the next seven days before being deleted.
The NEC states that the plan is to finally introduce the blockchain online voting system in the democratic elections through a step-by-step pilot operation that will verify the safety and stability of the system. The introduction of the electoral platform in public elections such as the elections to the National Assembly, local elections or presidential elections will be a political decision taken through the legislative branch of the nation.
If the legislation goes ahead, users will be able to cast their votes in the future using their personal computer or their cell phone rather than in person or by mail. The data recorded during the elections will be saved in the distributed network, so that voters can see the progress of the elections as they are voted more.
The NEC is sure that the system will eliminate the possibilities of hacking and electoral fraud. In addition, the organization says it will also add elements such as big data, Internet of Things (IoT) technology and artificial intelligence (AI), provided the system is quite popular.
South Korea is not the first nation to experience the blockchain vote. The Japanese city of Tsukuba became the first area to test the technology for voting in September 2018. The voters' identities were verified using the Japanese equivalent of social security cards. From there, accounts were created for citizens wishing to vote on what Japan Times called "social contribution projects".
Unfortunately, the system was not without problems. Many voters have reported that they have forgotten their access passwords and have not been able to cast their votes by the appropriate deadline. Furthermore, a lack of clarity was offered once voted if it had been counted.
West Virginia also experimented with the blockchain vote during the mid-term elections of 2018. Designed by the Voatz mobile voting platform, the system was designed for US troops serving abroad who wanted to cast their vote in the elections. federals of November. Voatz used facial recognition software to match the faces of the voters to their identity cards issued by the government. From there, troop members could eventually throw their cards, which were then made anonymous and registered via the blockchain.
