Blockchain as a Tool for Election Validity
Introduction
The integrity of elections serves as a foundational pillar in any democratic society, ensuring that the will of the people is both respected and accurately represented. While bringing major improvements in efficiency and transparency to electoral processes, the growing role of digital technologies also opens up new major vulnerabilities. This article discusses the complex role of technologies within the context of elections, investigating how innovations like blockchain can both improve and potentially compromise electoral validity. We aim to explore the balance these technologies offer in terms of potential benefits and associated risks, keenly examining the application of blockchain technology in the 2022 Kenyan General Election.
The Role of Technology in Elections
The integration of technology into electoral systems has both favourable and unfavourable implications. On one hand, it promises increased transparency and efficiency, facilitating smoother operations and more accessible information. On the other, it opens the door to risks such as cyber attacks, data manipulation, and security breaches that could undermine the democratic process.
Blockchain technology goes beyond being the foundation for cryptocurrencies; it can also be a guarantor to ensure electoral systems are fraud-proof and airtight in integrity. A blockchain is a distributed database whereby information is recorded on various nodes or computers on a network.
Each transaction or “block” within the blockchain is securely linked to the previous one through a cryptographic process known as “hashing.” Hashing transforms the data within a block into a unique string of characters. If any data within a block is altered, the hash changes significantly, immediately signalling potential tampering. This feature is critical for maintaining the integrity of electoral records, as altering any part of the blockchain would require changing all subsequent blocks, a near-impossible task without widespread collusion.
Blockchain Technology in Elections
A blockchain network can either be public or private, and it determines access rights to data between participants. Public blockchains offer complete transparency, allowing anyone to view and audit the ledger, which is ideal for fostering trust in the electoral process. However, for applications requiring confidentiality, such as certain electoral data, private blockchains restrict access to pre-approved parties, thus balancing transparency with security.
The decentralisation of blockchain is a key feature of the technology. Instead of data being kept on one big central server, it distributes data across the network of nodes and minimises all such risks connected with central points of failure, such as server outages or targeted attacks. This means no single entity has the total power over the complete database—something vital to avoid all kinds of fraudulent activities and to maintain the integrity of electoral processes.
Anonymity can also be managed in a strategic manner in blockchain systems. The identity of a voter will be kept hidden whenever required, for privacy concerns, but visibility for ensuring the transparency in the voting records is maintained. This selective visibility helps to maintain the security and verifiability of the electoral process while protecting the privacy of voters whose anonymity is crucial to an effective democratic process.
This blend of security, transparency, and control makes blockchain an invaluable technology for modernising electoral systems, offering a way to conduct more secure, verifiable, and fair elections.
Using blockchain technology certainly has its drawbacks especially in the context of East Africa. Scalability during elections would be difficult due to the amount of computational power required to validate transactions with increased difficulty in regions with network delays and limited bandwidth. A solution for this could be a hybrid approach; using the blockchain technology for immutable record-keeping and traditional databases for the actual voting process.
To increase the feasibility of this use case within the East African region, they can utilise the DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) system, where a group of representatives are chosen to confirm the votes of larger groups in order to decrease the negative impact of scalability.
Case Study: Kenya's Use of Blockchain Technology in Elections
The journey towards a transparent electoral process has been rough for Kenya, with heavy allegations of fraud and violence being ushered in with the multi-party democracy in 1991. If anything, the 2007 electoral violence that resulted in catastrophic deaths and displacements only but pointed to the need for reform. That is why President Uhuru Kenyatta launched a blockchain and artificial intelligence task force to help restore integrity and trust within Kenya's elections.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), under Chairman Wafula Chebukati, was driven by these perennial problems to explore blockchain technology towards the delivery of real-time, transparent election results. The application would, therefore, seek to enhance transparency, protect the voting process, and restore the trust of the public.
The most crucial application of this technology was the 2022 Kenyan Presidential elections. The IEBC rolled out a system that provided similar features to blockchain: decentralised and secure. Each polling station was akin to a node in the blockchain network, where it had biometric devices for voter authentication in place to ensure that votes could only be done in designated places. Such a setup was also involved with manual and electronic transmission systems for more enhanced security. Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) scanned the QR-coded forms from all polling stations, which were then sent on to the IEBC servers for analysis. Physical ballots are an extra step of secondary verification to further guarantee the integrity of the vote. The system managed to distribute polling stations in 46,229 units, showing a decentralised pattern similar to that of the Bitcoin global network's 14,951 nodes. An authenticated voter equipped with a national ID card and biometric data resembles a secure blockchain transaction in the sense that it must feature both a public address and a private key. This setup enabled the IEBC to operate as a neutral third party, collecting, verifying, and tallying the votes quickly and transparently.
The IEBC were able to scan and upload the voter forms of those stations onto their website so that voters, party agents, and the media could cross-check such information. This level of transparency, quite like that found in the public ledger of a blockchain, facilitated the ability to conduct preliminary vote counts that could make predictions on the outcome of the election before official results were announced.
It is this innovative method of election management using blockchain technology that provides a significant breakthrough towards a possible solution to electoral challenges facing Kenya. It demonstrates a scalable model that can enhance election integrity and public trust through technological innovation. This model may not yet be perfect, but with time the increased efficiency will lead to less economical costs to the economy during the election period.
Balancing Technology's Benefits and Risks
In Kenya, for instance, this is only achievable through good regulatory frameworks that define who has the mandate to write data to the blockchain used in the election process. This would ideally be limited to only trusted devices found at the polling station, in a bid to reduce data input from unauthorised sources and therefore not tamper with the elections. Regulatory frameworks must also address the challenges specific to blockchain, such as the potential for multiple voting instances due to its anonymous nature. This can be countered by implementing biometric verifications such as fingerprints or retinal scans during voter registration to ensure that one voter is only in a position to cast one vote.
This point concerns the need to tackle challenges that are specific to blockchain. In a blockchain network, the control over a majority of the nodes is needed to change the data, by definition, the system appears tamper-resistant, just like the Bitcoin network. The high threshold for changes in blockchain data underlines the security potential of a high nature of electoral systems: large fraud will become expensive and less likely.
Another strong point lies with the resilience in this blockchain system. The system is designed to work with or without a region online or in case of internet disruption in the voting process, which makes the process of the election continue without hitches. It enhances the dependability of the electoral system since once more, such missing data can be updated and added when such a system is finally restored.
The blockchain-based voting system of the IEBC drastically reduces the problem of trust; it enables voters to independently verify all the records, much in the same way that Bitcoin is designed in a decentralised manner. However, once the votes are cast and recorded in the blockchain, they are signed and sealed in the same manner in which Bitcoin transactions on the network are finalised. It provides finality, which means if a vote is issued, it can not be undone or changed, hence adding more transparency and security to the voting process.
However, issues related to access to the internet or even the possibility of forking the blockchain (whereby one group may theoretically take over the network by using computational power to mine faster than the majority of the network and garnering the “influence” within the network to create new chains and disrupt/change transactions) needs to be adequately regulated and monitored. The government needs to ensure that all polling stations have reliable access to the internet, and the computational power of the devices connected to the blockchain is regulated so that no one group can take control in order to disproportionately affect results.
Liability rules should equally be in place for when the system experiences vote alterations or errors. The accountability nature of the blockchain is in its design, where any anomaly detected is easily traced back to its origin. Third-party developers should be held accountable in updating the system, debugging, and ensuring the code is running smoothly without any unauthorised alterations since they are in the front line in maintaining the integrity of the code of the blockchain.
Public awareness and digital literacy are most important in such kinds of technological changes. Educating the electorate on how the blockchain works and what security measures are in place can build trust and also see to it that the voters have faith in the new system. This will put the voter at liberty to take part fully in the democratic process, secure their rights, and count their vote securely and correctly.
Fulfilling these regulatory, technical, and educational needs will dramatically improve the gains that blockchain technology can bring to bear on the transparency and security associated with Kenyan elections and, for that matter, other African elections. This is, however, only subject to constant evaluation and adjustment to ensure their relevance in the form of increased technological threats in the electoral landscape.
Conclusion
There’s difficulty in finding a one size fits all solution, although blockchain presents an efficient method to deal with election validity, it is still vulnerable to coercion in an environment that is not controlled. Totally halting mass interference & voter buying may not be a possibility but this may be a step in the right direction. Not much can stop physical coercion from happening behind closed doors if voting is happening electronically.
Integrating blockchain into an electoral system ensures availability, accessibility & security. A hurdle Africa would have to hop over is the technological investment in ensuring the system is not slow, guaranteeing operational resilience. Policy and change management procedures would be needed to socialise this technology especially in the event that things do not go according to plan. Disaster preparedness and crisis communications would be necessary to prepare for (or avoid) in the event of politically motivated riots due to technological eros in the system which are not understood due to ineffective socialisation of this new approach.
Technology ministries within Africa should put capital into the research and development of blockchain tools for integration into the current election operating models. A full on transition may not be feasible but a partial roll out can be effective running concurrently with traditional methods. Perhaps starting with specific regions/constituencies to assess the feasibility of roll-outs can be a reasonable start.
