This project will make possible the elimination of voting by e-mail and decreasing the cost of printing ballots
The company Gfi Spain is working on the development of a digital voting system based on blockchain technology. The name of the platform is Smartvote and it uses Oracle Blockchain Cloud technology, this is, a comprehensive distributed ledger cloud platform, with the aim of avoiding the falsification and manipulation of system data.
The procedure for holding elections will work through a platform that has already approved the first phase of development and testing. “The digital vote is an idea that, until the arrival of blockchain technology, was very difficult to carry out due to the impossibility of guaranteeing the immutability of the results”, explains an article by the specialized media Esmart City.
Alfonso Dopico, Strategic Consultant at Gfi Spain, explained that the use of blockchain technology in voting systems would prevent third parties from altering the results. “Users are not identified and the platform does not retain their identity. It respects anonymity. This helps to improve the quality of the electoral process and allows getting immediate and transparent results”, explained Dopico.
The company highlighted that the use of blockchain technology in electronic voting systems offers other benefits, such as the increase in the levels of citizen participation, the possibility of voting even from the mobile phone, the elimination of voting by e-mail and the possibility of decreasing the cost of printing ballots.
Dopico said that this new platform will speed up other procedures. “This technology is not only applicable to elections, but it is easy to adapt to all types of procedures of any size such as those of citizen consultation”.
The official site of Gfi Spain also disseminated information about the project. “Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service provides numerous technical features such as the implementation of Hyperledger Fabric. This makes possible a better transactional performance of business solutions, its interoperability with any other blockchain platform, a completely open platform for the development of applications or totally predictable costs and performance”, said Jesus Guerra, Oracle’s Presales Director.
According to Guerra, Oracle’s strategy is to add these functions in its catalog of business solutions (ERP, CRM) in order to make these solutions a broader service and minimize the costs and effort of development of blockchain applications.
This news was published before the electoral campaign that takes place in Spain’s general elections (Sunday, April 28th). Until now, electronic vote is the protagonist of these elections; thus, ensuring the effectiveness of electronic votes could be another step to the future adoption of blockchain technology.
Since March 2018, different countries have begun to adopt distributed accounting technology, which offers transparency and security. Among these are Thailand and The United States.
In West Virginia, in The United States, primary elections of May 8th, 2018, blockchain technology had small but important participation to show that it is possible to direct blockchain-based voting. Only a select group, such as the military, participated in testing this system.
At the beginning of 2019, the National Center for Electronics and Computer Technology of Thailand announced the development of an electronic voting system also supported by blockchain technology.
The advantages of blockchain technology, such as the inalterability of data and public access to information, continue to demonstrate their potential in the prevention of corruption on electoral systems.
By Maria Victoria Rodriguez
