The democratic process is not like a financial transaction
According to the study, one of the main differences when utilizing blockchain technology for a democratic process like elections against financial transactions is that when fraud happens, financial institutions usually have ways to compensate victims for their losses.
Customers are commonly refunded with the stolen funds while in other industries like cryptocurrency, exchanges are able to freeze tokens related to an attack.
“If vote-casting is entirely software-based, a malicious system could fool the voter about how the vote was actually recorded,” Rivest said. “Democracy — and the consent of the governed — cannot be made contingent on whether some software correctly recorded voters’ choices.”
Rivest added, “For elections, there can be no insurance or recourse against a failure of democracy. There is no means to make voters whole again after a compromised election.”
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