Trust Issues

Blockchain Disciples Have a New Goal: Running Our Next Election

Amid vote-hacking fears, election officials are jumping on the crypto bandwagon — but cybersecurity experts are sounding an alarm

If they squinted hard enough, attendees of the International Centre for Parliamentary Studies’ annual Electoral Symposium, which took place in late May at the Troia Design Hotel, 90 minutes south of Lisbon, Portugal, could just about see the future of democracy taking shape.

As usual, credentialed participants — electoral officials from around the world, staff from various NGOs, and an array of eager vendors — could play with the latest suitcase ballot scanners, price out indelible inks, and peruse an array of tamper-resistant security seals, the time-honored instruments of elective governance.

“It’s funny because most people don’t know too much about blockchain, but they know it’s brilliant.”

But this year there was something different in the air: heated talk of a new technology, ingenious in its design, far-reaching in its implications: the blockchain.