Brazil: Future Blockchain Voting? – The Kryptonome

Brazil’s Voting Authority (TSE) has public tired that voting may soon be possible in the country using blockchain technology.

To be specific, the Infrastructure Modernization Coordinator, Celio Castro Wermerlinger, explained that Brazil is studying blockchain technology to see if it would be possible to use it for more transparent and decentralized voting. The research program is entitled “Fremtidens valg”.

An event organized by a researcher Fernanda Soares Andrade was also held in Brazil on July 29 to discuss the possibilities of modernizing the country’s voting system. Carlos Mario Vellosoformer president of TSE, also attended the conference.

The event was part of the 74th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC), where the book “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Brazilian Electronic Voting Machine” was also presented.

This was stated during the meeting:

“TSE realized it had to engage in the computer age and put the human hand out of votes once and for all.”

Also at the conference was a professor Avelino Zorzowhich outlined an overview of the evolution of the electoral system in Brazil going into the operation of electronic ballot boxes, showing that it would take more than a thousand years for a person, using a powerful computer, to break just one of the dozens of cryptographic keys with which the electronic voting system is equipped.

The speech then explained how vote audit and inspection work, from system development to the post-election phase, but also how in the future they want to use cryptography and blockchain more to get an ever better system for voting.

Voting via blockchain

Blockchain has been touted for years as a technology that could revolutionize the voting systembut so far it has not been widely adopted because there are still many problems linked to anonymity and thus privacy, as well as being able to determine who actually has the right to vote.

Furthermore, blockchain technology is unfortunately still poorly understood and lacks user-friendly applications for everyone to be able to use it for such an important activity. This can act as a deterrent to simple voting.

Voatz and SecureVote for blockchain voting

There is a company that deals with this particular use case. It is Voatzwhich previously helped West Virginia residents vote using cell phones during the 2018 election.

However, this project has been heavily criticized due to security issues it may have, and in fact the authorities have suspended its use in 2020.

The blockchain that Voatz uses leverages HyperLedger platform created by IBM, so it is not a permissionless blockchain like Bitcoin.

A blockchain-based voting project has also been under consideration in Italy for some time. In fact, as early as 2018 was the 5-star movement speaks about it, but no real official vote was held using these systems.

There is also another voting app: SecureVote. It is an Australian company for online voting on mobile devices.

FC Barcelona votes with blockchain

Blockchain is certainly already being used for “less important” voting. For example, there are several polls created on Socios to vote for your favorite team’s shirt or the background music for the goal.

Recently, the FC Barcelona team conducted a vote on blockchain through Vocdoni’s platform (based on the Aragon DAO protocol) to elect the 30 representatives to the FCB Advisory Council, which is Barcelona’s board.

The press release dedicated to the initiative read:

“After completing a two-factor authentication via SMS, voters voted with blind signatures and received a voter proof code. This process ensured that every vote was counted while maintaining voter anonymity.”

Other European organizations, incl Omnium Culturalhave also used the voting platform for shareholder meetings and elections.