Democracy Made Easy

Voting matters, a lot

Elections allow the general public to express their opinions in the form of a vote, which is a fundamental part of any democratic system. But in India, elections are fraught with a lot of fraud and cheating (as we’ve seen many times before). Unlawful elections led to riots by opposition parties, who accused the winning party of manipulating the ballot and this puts citizen’s life at risk. Hence, a transparent and reliable election process is essential due to its importance to our society.

There is a dire need to develop a voting system that is reliable, trustworthy and can protect the anonymity and integrity of a vote and provide end-to-end verification. Since we are living in the era of cutting edge technology the solution also has to be cutting edge and this is where blockchain steps in. Now let us have a look at what Blockchain really is.

Blockchain:

Blockchain is a relatively new technology that is transforming the way organizations run because of its potential to supply reliable data from untrustworthy sources. It is essentially a digital ledger with three crucial qualities. To begin with, all the blockchains are entirely free and open-source software. The blockchain source code can be used, disseminated, and built upon by anybody. Furthermore, it is a distributed digital ledger. A transactional system that uses the blockchain as a ledger operates in such a manner that several instances of the ledger interact inside the network, and transactions are recorded and processed by all of the copies of the ledger, not just one. Finally, the blockchain is, in fact, an entirely transparent ledger. It is not a centralized database in which no one can monitor transactions. On the contrary, the blockchain is inherently transparent in that as it records all transactions that have ever occurred in a certain network and application (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos, etc).

Now we will understand how this technology is going to revolutionize the voting system:

This is far greater than an experiment on blockchain as it will revolutionize the voting system and introduce smartphone poling. Smartphone polling with a secure and verified platform may eliminate voting fraud and encourage participation. It will enable voting internationally, irrespective of distance and time, for citizens. It also provides a powerful framework for the Electoral Committee to preserve electoral transparency, reduce elections, accelerate vote counting and ensure that every vote is counted. Using blockchain we will store all the electoral system data while preserving the confidentiality of participants, on a publicly observable ledger and often with results available immediately. A lot of people have to travel to their home districts to cast vote and as a result, many don’t bother to cast their vote at all but because of this voting system they can cast their vote from any district and the blockchain frameworks will make sure that the vote is counted in the home district only. Votes are transparent and anonymous at the same time, thanks to anonymous transactions known as hashes.

Let's not understand the complicated working of this technology now but should focus on the user-friendly functioning:

This project’s functioning is pretty easy. It is really simple to use. The user (voter) will submit his information on the platform, which the Smart Contract will validate. Once the information has been confirmed, the user will be invited to vote using the token that the government will give to every lawful voter. Once the transaction (Vote) is recorded in the blockchain using smart contacts, the data can’t be altered because blockchain is immutable, so there’s no chance of it being changed. It is impossible to cast an invalid or duplicate vote because every vote goes through a process known as proof of work in which data is sent to every node in the blockchain and verified by millions of nodes. Votes are transparent and anonymous at the same time, thanks to anonymous transactions known as hashes.

The User Interface is designed in such a way that it’s as simple to use as possible, and we made every aspect of it simply accessible. The votes are then tallied, and the winner is declared.

The world’s biggest democracy India will benefit greatly from it and will be able to save billions in election costs by allowing people to vote from their own devices, without ever having to leave the comfort of their own homes, and at their convenience. And on top of saving billions of dollars, we can also guarantee that people who normally don’t vote because of the traditional process will vote using our technology, because we all know that democracy is nothing but the voice of every individual, regardless of their political affiliation.