Voter Account
Blockchains for Voting: An idea whose time will never come
Blog Source: Election Law Blog posted by Rick Hasen (https://electionlawblog.org/?p=104265)
By Duncan Buell, NCR Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina and Advisor to U.S. Vote Foundation
If you were to ask computing and election security experts for the two things they would most strongly oppose when it comes to elections, nearly all would probably answer: Internet voting and the use of blockchains in elections. There is nearly universal agreement that the Internet today is not sufficiently secure for something as important as elections, and that making it secure will be very hard indeed.
Not only do blockchains add no value to the election process; blockchains actually introduce new vulnerabilities to the voting process. Nonetheless, several startup companies are promoting Internet voting and claiming their use of blockchains is a benefit. Not surprisingly, it seems that no purveyor of blockchain voting is willing to allow independent testing by experts to see if their claims are justified.
The Internet, in general, is not a place for elections. It is difficult, if not impossible, to authenticate a person attempting to vote over the Internet. It is impossible to guarantee that the voter’s computer has not been infected with malware. It is impossible to guarantee that a denial-of-service attack won’t take place. And it is impossible in current systems and those likely to be available in the near future to produce votes that can be audited without stripping out the voters’ right to a secret ballot.
