If Blockchain Technologies Corp. has its way, then Bitcoin will be well on its way to become the driving force behind democracy. The company is working on developing bitcoin blockchain technology based voting machines that can be used in elections.
The bitcoin network already uses blockchain as a distributed ledger that keeps track of and confirms all transactions happening over the bitcoin network. The same technology can be used to for elections as well, where instead of bitcoin a similar digital token is used as electronic ballot. The concept of using blockchain technology for voting is a new one. It has been discussed in number of articles and there are few bitcoin startups who have experimented with it too. However nobody has so far developed an actual voting machine working on blockchain technology.
According to reports, Blockchain Technologies Corp’s blockchain based voting device is more of a scanner than a full-fledged automated voting system. During elections, the voters will have to fill in a paper ballot with QR codes. These QR codes will signify the blockchain address, ballot ID and election ID. Voters will be casting their ballot as usual and during counting, the blockchain technology will come in play. Every ballot will be scanned and the entry will be updated on to the blockchain which is readily accessible to anyone who knows how to use applications like blockchain explorer.
The only main advantage of this new blockchain based voting machine is the transparency of election results. Each candidate will have his/her own wallet/blockchain ID to which these votes will be credited. So people who are interested in knowing the status of any contestant can search for the contestant’s ID on blockchain and the number of votes received by that candidate will be available. The voting machine is still in its prototype stages and it is still unsure about whether it will be adopted for elections or not.