With the on-going chaos of the 2020 United States Presidential election, there is a renewed interest in changing how things are done. Perhaps blockchain technology would help make elections safer and easier.

Images from the 2020 US Presidential election show long lines of masked and socially-distancing people waiting to vote. There seem to be paper ballots in boxes from undisclosed locations still arriving at voting places. And it takes days, if not weeks to count them.

This election has been a quagmire and it may be months before it is sorted out. But technologists and entrepreneurs have been suggesting technological solutions for a long time.

 What is blockchain technology?

In the last decade, advances in technology are breathtaking!  In a techno-pandemic, we are finding better ways to do many things. self-driving cars, it seems there must be a better way of voting than the way it’s being handled today.

One such technology that can become a game-changer for the voting process is blockchain. This blog highlights how we can use blockchain in voting for secure elections and how it can make the entire process highly secure and robust.

Basically, blockchain is a digital ledger. All transactions are recorded and the data is encrypted. The blockchain serves as a secure database of transactions and every record is verifiable.

 All information is decentralized which assures the network cannot be taken down, because it doesn’t exist in one place.

The digital ledger records and stores all transactions, which are recorded in a block. When the block is completed and more transactions are recorded they are added to the blockchain in chronological order.

Each block is secured and linked to each other using cryptographic principles. A unique code called a “hash” that separates each block.

Blockchain technology may be the solution

Voting with blockchain could eliminate most election fraud and boost transparency. Each vote would be safely stored as a block on the blockchain, making it tamper-proof.

Long voting lines would be unnecessary since voters could vote with their phones or devices remotely. Counts would be digitized and give instant and real-time results. Very little staff would be needed to conduct an election. 

By its very nature, blockchain technology would solve all the problems that we have in the 2020 election. 

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