U.S. Senate staffers on the Everlasting Subcommittee on Investigations, looking for tech to maintain the chamber legislating by way of crises, floated blockchain voting in an April 30 “continuity of Senate” memo.
Coming a number of days earlier than the Senate’s deliberate return from its COVID-19 recess, the 29-page memo, which isn’t a proposal to alter Senate guidelines or from the committee that opinions them, preceded the subcommittee’s Thursday roundtable on crisis-time continuity options.
Blockchain-based options have been included on the record of options.
“The Senate might take into account blockchain” if its 100 members should vote remotely, staffers wrote. Additionally they proposed voting on end-to-end encryption platforms, and through a military-esque “air-gapped” communications system akin to these presidents and generals use.
Blockchain is probably essentially the most controversial of the three options with regards to distant voting. Over the previous yr researchers have blasted blockchain and internet-backed voting platforms as insecure and susceptible to bugs, prompting some election authorities to pull out of plans to make use of them.
Staffers didn’t share researchers’ fears.
“Though some have raised considerations about the usage of on-line techniques for voting, these considerations are extra particular to secret poll elections than they’re to public Senate votes,” they wrote.
That’s to not say a Senate blockchain can be a totally protected blockchain. The staffers have been acutely terrified of a “51 % assault” state of affairs wherein a malicious actor seized the ability of consensus by taking majority management of the voting chain.
Assuming one might stop a 51 % assault and likewise shore up any bugs, cryptographic or in any other case, the staffers have been bullish on blockchain voting within the Senate. They wrote that it provides transparency and lowers the danger of incorrect vote tallies.
“With its encrypted distributed ledger, blockchain can each transmit a vote securely and likewise confirm the proper vote,” the memo mentioned.
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