Blockchain voting faces uphill battle in push for election security

Despite initial optimism, experts say misunderstandings and misconceptions make the system a tough sell

Vote technology firms touting blockchain advancements have struggled to convince municipalities to adopt their products but have had success with private-sector clients. AP

The seemingly boundless enthusiasm for blockchain technology has yet to spill over to those conducting elections around the world.

"It's one of those industries where it doesn't matter how good of a job you do, somebody can just arbitrarily say 'fraud' and it just scares people off," said Pete Martin, founder and chief executive of Votem, an election management company that uses biometric and blockchain methods that it says can make voting easier and more inclusive.

For the 2024 US presidential election, unlike the 2020 poll, Mr Martin said Votem doesn't have any state election boards or municipalities using the company's software to allow people to vote.

Votem's system, according to Mr Martin, allowed for people to submit their vote via patented smartphone software provided by the company. Those votes, in turn, would be stored as a block of data, simultaneously broadcast to a ledger validation system anonymously.

It is a potentially lucrative market. According to Virtue Market Research, the electric voting system sector could reach $1.7 billion in value by 2030.

That market size, combined with increasing concern over election security, has generated significant interest in alternative voting methods.

Votem was able to ride that wave to some extent, and secured technology award nominations and flattering media coverage. Yet turning those alternative voting methods mainstream has proved to be difficult in subsequent years.

In 2016, the company's platform was briefly used in Washington, DC and Montana for recording primary and general election results. It also had success pitching and selling its voting technology to labour unions, private businesses and other organisations that routinely hold elections.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland also used Votem's technology following several years of complications involving music artist inductee elections.

That success, combined with the initial surge in blockchain technology interest, prompted Votem to buy another voter technology company, Everyone Counts, back in 2018.

Yet only several years later, Mr Martin had to restructure the company and layoffs ensued as the lucrative municipality election bodies didn't adopt its much-touted voting technology.

Mr Martin said despite the popularity and proof of concept with regard to decentralised and unalterable databases, which make up the backbone of blockchain technology, there is still fear among many voters and officials who make decisions about election equipment.

"People don't trust software that they don't see," he said, explaining why there is still ample scepticism over blockchain voting platforms. "You have some very authoritative people saying, 'don't trust this, only trust a physical piece of paper that you can mark,'" he said, referring to proponents of physical ballots.

While the overall blockchain voting sector may seem nascent, Votem is far from being alone in the space. Voatz, based in Boston, touts a similar version of the technology.

Using the company's smartphone app in areas where Voatz is implemented, members of the electorate can use their mobiles to vote, and then a paper ballot is generated at the local jurisdiction for tabulation.

According to Voatz's website, its technology has been used to conduct more than 130 elections for government bodies, union elections and professional associations, but it still hasn't had much mainstream success in terms of much-anticipated elections like the US presidential vote.

The website goes to great lengths to debunk the notion that the Voatz platform is similar to the idea of internet voting.

"Internet voting generally refers to the submission of a ballot on a website from a personal computer (PC). This method is highly insecure, as it can be difficult, or even impossible, to detect whether a PC has been compromised," a statement reads.

"In contrast, Voatz is a mobile application that can only be downloaded to recently manufactured smartphones. These phones need to have several advanced security mechanisms, including fingerprint and facial recognition, which Voatz uses for secure voter identity verification and ballot submission."

Several years ago in West Virginia, 24 counties in the state used Voatz for a pilot programme for active military and overseas voters to use blockchain technology, but the company failed to secure long-term commitment from the state amid concerns from various researchers and election experts.

In 2018, a report from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine titled Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy, didn't mince words about efforts to use technology for elections.

"While the notion of using a blockchain as an immutable ballot box may seem promising, blockchain technology does little to solve the fundamental security issues of elections, and indeed, blockchains introduce additional security vulnerabilities," the report read. While blockchain proponents often boast about decentralisation, that very idea goes against the grain of how elections work, it added.

"Public elections are inherently centralised ... requiring that election administrators define the contents of ballots, identify the list of eligible voters, and establish the duration of voting."

The authors of the report also pointed out that the software required to examine the postings on blockchain could become compromised or might be inadvertently flawed. "If such software is corrupted, then verifiability may be illusory," it said.

There is also the overall notion that paper ballots can't be hacked. Yet Mr Martin said such a system can be burdensome for those who need to vote in absentia, or those who might have physical or visual disabilities, among other factors.

"You bank online, you fill out your taxes online and that still makes a lot of sense, right?" he said, when asked about critics of blockchain-based voting platforms. "The politicians making the laws, they don't understand this stuff ... it's so technical to them so they're thinking, 'let's just do paper ballots. It [voting systems] is a very tough industry, and not just in US but around the world."

Meanwhile, as more than 100 million US citizens get ready to vote in the coming presidential election, exactly how they vote will depend on factors such as in which county, city and state they reside.

Some will use optical scan machines, others electric console systems and some will use postal ballots. Potentially complicating matters is that each jurisdiction might have its own method of counting the votes.

In a recent ruling in the state of Georgia, the decision was made to require the hand-counting of ballots on top of the automatic machine counting that takes place.

The move generated controversy among some who found the decision to be superfluous and potentially burdensome, while others insisted it was necessary to ensure the integrity of the vote.

Regardless, over at Votem, Mr Martin said the entire scenario proved his main point, that there has to be a better, more efficient and more inclusive way to hold elections.

"We kind of joke that mobile [smartphone] voting is 10 years away and we've been saying that for 20 years," he said. "We always say that when Gen Z essentially starts running the country, that's when mobile voting will happen.

Votem has pivoted away from purely mobile voting technology and instead is focusing on what it calls FastPass voting, which would allow people to mark their ballots on phones, but also use a QR code to print off their ballot at actual polling stations, potentially reducing confusion with physical ballots.

"You just walk over to the tabulator, stick it in the scanner and you're good to go," he said, comparing it to the process of preordering food from restaurants, also noting Votem's approach would allow for an audit trail to prevent any vote count discrepancies.

"We really want to push it out in the midterm elections in 2026," he said.