Democratic Party primary results in a difficult birth, voting system paralysis highlights risks of centralized mechanisms

The 2020 United States presidential election is approaching, with the Democratic Party kicking off the crucial first battle of the party's primary in Iowa on the 3rd. However, the application used by the Iowa Democratic Party inexplicably crashed, causing a complete paralysis of the election process. The lack of transparency and criticism of the application have sparked concerns, with security experts pointing out the risks of centralized systems.

• Democratic Party's Voting System "Unable to Count Votes"
• Is it Feasible to Build a Voting System with Blockchain?

Election System Failure Highlights Risks of Centralized Mechanisms

In the history of the Democratic Party, since 1972, winning the first battle in Iowa has had a 67% chance of winning the nomination. However, the Democratic Party used an extremely low-transparency application as a voting system, leading to a complete breakdown of the election process.

Troy Price, the Chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, emphasized in a statement that the recorded data is accurate and they will manually verify the paper records. Asaf Ashkenazi, CEO of the software security company Verimatrix, commented on the incident:

The error rate or density of code varies depending on the application and the security education of the developers. In this case of the primaries, it seems that the quality of code testing and review was not sufficient.

According to reports, the Democratic Party had previously refused to disclose the name of the application to prevent interference from third parties, such as Russia. Joshua Simmons, a board member of the non-profit organization "Open Source Initiative," pointed out:

Frankly, using proprietary software for significant events like elections is inappropriate. Open-source software ensures that security researchers have access to it beforehand and can make improvements. Openness is a crucial step in building transparency, trust, and creating more flexible systems.

Therefore, the question of whether blockchain can be used as a large-scale voting system remains unresolved.

Chaos in the Primaries Spells Crisis for the Democratic Party

The lack of transparency in the primary results not only damages public trust in the application but also leads to various misinformation and conspiracy theories, dealing a severe blow to the Democratic Party. Republican members openly mocked the Democratic Party's primary disaster, with Trump tweeting:

Thank you, everyone! Tonight, we had a great victory in Iowa!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1224550106462138368

The collapse of the Democratic Party's voting system has once again prompted the crypto community to consider using blockchain as the core system for voting. Last year, ABM reported that the public blockchain project AEternity conducted a blockchain voting experiment in Uruguay to optimize citizen participation in internal voting using blockchain technology.

However, voting mechanisms built on blockchain are not without security risks. Previously, Moscow's Ethereum-based blockchain voting system was questioned by the French government's scientific research institution CNRS, claiming that the system's low security could potentially expose all voters' voting details.

Therefore, whether blockchain is suitable for large-scale voting systems remains a debatable issue.

Blockchain Could Introduce More Complexity

According to blockchain writer Adam B. Levine, theoretically, using an app that records data on the blockchain would make all recorded results transparent and fair, visible to everyone from all parties to the media. However, once there are slight errors or fundamental mistakes in the results, because they are recorded on the blockchain, they would initially be considered "valid." Any subsequent changes would be seen as "violations."

Levine stated that the issue this time was mainly with the problematic app and not so much with the blockchain. The primary itself is a decentralized process. Levine mentioned that while the blockchain industry may think they have found solutions, the nature of the problem when implementing applications is not technical.

Imagine elderly people without technical concepts having to write down and save 24 mnemonic phrases. Levine believes that people already have established behaviors and habits, and concepts like blockchain private keys and irreversible actions are not user-friendly.

He thinks that the contribution of blockchain in this case is to make people see the world from a different perspective, question the concentration of power and information asymmetry, and weigh the pros and cons of things.

Further Reading

• AEternity to Conduct Blockchain Voting Experiment in Uruguay
• Research Shows: Moscow Blockchain Voting System "Extremely Insecure"

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