The Brazilian Voting Authority (TSE) has publicly announced that it is studying blockchain as a technology that could help the organization organize ballots. Celio Castro Vermerlinger, the institution’s coordinator of modernization, said this decentralized ledger technology was included in a research program called “Election of the Future”.
Brazilian TSE researching blockchain technology
Blockchain technology is being incorporated in a number of solutions designed for a variety of applications, including ballot and voting technologies. Brazil’s voting authority announced last month that they are researching blockchain technology and the various ways it could be incorporated into ballots.
Celio Castro Vermerlinger, coordinator of modernization at Brazil’s Voting Authority, said end-to-end voting protocols, post-quantum cryptography, shared keys and blockchain were part of the technologies being studied. The investigation is part of a program called “Elections of the Future”, which seeks more efficient and more economically viable solutions to be implemented in electronic voting systems.
However, Vermerlinger offered no time-frame for implementing these solutions and argued that the Brazilian voting system, which is now 100% national, was secure because of the electronic solutions implemented in every ballot.
Blockchain and Voting
Although voting is listed as one of the potential applications of the blockchain system due to its trust and security, it has not been widely adopted apart from several pilot tests conducted in the US and incidents in other countries.
Voatz, a blockchain-based voting company, is one of the pioneers in this area, helping out-of-state West Virginia residents vote using their mobile phones during the 2018 vote. However, this pilot was criticized because of the safety issues it could bring to the election results. Officials in the state suspended its use in 2020 citing security concerns.
Even after that, the platform was used to conduct a mock election in Chandler, Arizona with the intention of testing and the reaction of citizens using such an app on a ballot. The pilot was recently found positive by the city clerk.
Voatz has also been involved in elections in other countries, including Venezuela. The application was used to organize an unofficial referendum against the country’s President Nicolas Maduro, with millions of people using it in 2020.
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