The Australian government-owned Australia Post has unveiled plans that it will conduct tests through digital voting via the blockchain technology in a bid to reduce costs and improve efficiency. The plans have been met with criticism from a prominent privacy consultant. Recently a submission was presented to the Victorian Electoral Matters Committee by the Australia Post who intend to operate electronic elections utilizing the blockchain technology. According to ZDNet , the postal service thinks that with the use of digital voting it will improve on convenience, better counting, reduced costs, transparency, and efficiency. In the submission, Tim Adamson, Australia Post state director of Victoria Government and Tasmania said that the emergence of cryptocurrencies via blockchain technology highlighted opportunities to repurpose the technology to capture various digital transactions in immutable, distributed, and secure ways. He said: In many ways voting is an ideal use case for blockchain technology application beyond crypto currency. With demand for digitisation high and technology shifts opening up new approaches we believe that now is the time to solve the digital voting challenge. Tamper-Proof System? According to Adamson, the use of blockchain would provide the ideal solution for a tamper-proof system that would eliminate manipulation, provide traceability, but still deliver anonymity. However, critics of the idea have come out to view their thoughts. One such critic is Steve Wilson of security outfit Lockstep. Speaking to The Register he gave his thoughts on the use of blockchain as a basis for voting. As blockchains don’t require third parties, management or administrators to function, no one needs to know who or what the account holders, nodes, or miners are to trust them. He added that while it’s useful, it doesn’t go well with voting: Blockchain is not necessary, and more importantly, neither is it sufficient. Trust is a […]
