This decade, Democracy as we know it has taken a major shift in its course.
In fact, politics as we know it has also changed. The influence of populism and revolt in countries all across the west have impacted several countries’ political courses.
Paired with the implementation of the use of social media user data in order to construct political campaigns, popularized by the United States “Cambridge Analytica” scandal, politics took a shift being now more than ever, a popularity tournament where contestants try to paint a “good vs evil” picture for the general public.
This resulted in a lot of fraud claims in some of the biggest economies in the world. Most notably, Donald Trump’s electorate nearly attempted a full-on terrorist act on the country’s republic, when over 6000 rioters invaded the Capitol building in Washington, putting in danger congress members and even the nation’s Vice-President at the time.
However, that influence is not limited to the United States of America.
Brazil, the 11th largest economy in the world, is currently dealing with a 2-month-long protest by Bolsonaro supporters who claim that his election loss to president-elect Lula was fraudulent.
So far, there’s is little indication that the protests will end. This week, Brazilian authorities arrested a Bolsonaro fan who was orchestrating a terrorist bombing attack on one of the South American nation’s most important airports.
It’s not hard to see that these “fraud” allegations hold little weight when paired with reality.
However, it seems as if now more than ever, nations should invest more in reassuring taxpayers that there is as minimal of a chance as possible that fraud can occur.
Blockchain As A Solution To Transparent Elections
As it stands, the vast majority of elections are run by a central authority, responsible for recording counting, and checking all of the votes.
This means that a centralized agent is fully responsible for handling elections. Of course, Governments have several security steps in order to provide the public with a secure voting system.
But what if, elections were not governed by one specific authority? What if there were a specific technology that could make everyone responsible for the veracity of election results?
Fortunately, blockchain technology could do just that. To the general public, blockchain tech is just something that lame celebrities go to spend millions on NFTs, which have a bad rep of their own.
However, the potential for blockchain is almost immeasurable. That type of technology can, and likely will, revolutionize the world.
As an example, the blockchain company Polygon implemented a blockchain-based police filing reports platform. The technology involved guarantees the anonymity of the person filing the report, as a measure against police corruption.
In a potential blockchain-governed election, this entire process would be decentralized, meaning that the entire country would be able to hold a copy of the full voting record on their own devices.
This means that altering the result of an election would be impossible. Once several devices hold a copy of the voting record, no one would be able to change it.
Of course, the data showing each specific vote would have to be encrypted in order to guarantee citizens’ voting rights. But as it stands, a blockchain election is likely our best option to guarantee a safe and completely unadulterated election.
