The patent filed by the United States Postal Service focuses on an alternative, secure and reliable voting system so that American citizens can exercise their right to vote in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to the isolation situation experienced worldwide due to the current pandemic, the US Post Office he presented a patent application on a voting system based on blockchain that will allow citizens to exercise their vote via mail in a safe and guaranteed manner.
The United States presidential elections will take place in November of this year, and as many of us already know, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. In the midst of the health and economic crisis, governments around the world continue to implement measures to keep society as isolated as possible and prevent the rapid spread of the virus, which in recent months has claimed the lives of more than 772 thousand people while Nearly 21 million suffer from the terrible disease, collapsing health systems.
In the United States alone, COVID-19 has infected more than 5,3 million citizens, and has caused the death of about 165 thousand people, making it the country most affected by the pandemic according to the latest report published by the World Health Organization. Therefore, the option of setting up physical voting centers, where hundreds of thousands of people gather to exercise their right to vote, is not a viable option in these difficult times.
For this reason, the nation's Postal Service decided to present an alternative based on a secure and reliable technology such as blockchain, as the best option so that citizens can actively participate in the next elections, although the current president, Donald Trump, is completely opposed to the possibility of voting by mail.
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Blockchain-based voting system What does the United States Postal Service seek to achieve?
Patent No. US 2020/0258338 Al, which was presented on February 7 of this year, was recently published on August 13. In this application, the United States Postal Service, also known as USPS for its acronym in English, announced that it is a voting system that will implement blockchain technology and the characteristics of the mail to make it safe and reliable for everyone.
“A voting system can use the security of blockchain and mail to provide a reliable voting system. A registered voter receives a computer-readable code in the mail, confirming her identity and confirming correct ballot information in an election. “The system separates voter ID and votes to ensure vote anonymity and stores them in a distributed ledger on a blockchain.”
Next, the USPS states that the security, reliability and transparency of the votes and the electoral process can be guaranteed through the postal service itself or an entity with similar characteristics. The USPS assures that the incorporation of a computer system based on blockchain or a distributed ledger will ensure the security and privacy of the votes, while guaranteeing the transparency and reliability of the entire process itself, avoiding the manipulation or modification of votes and the possibility of electoral fraud.
Still, despite the Postal Service's confident claims, current US President Donald Trump said that if this system is implemented, there will be “fraudulent ballots everywhere,” even alluding that even dogs and dead people will vote.
Donald Trump denies funds for the construction of the voting system
Donald Trump's administration decided to reduce and block additional funding to the Postal Service, as a way to slow down and prevent the USPS from establishing the blockchain voting system by mail proposed in the patent application. According to the president, negotiations on additional subsidy and stimulus funds in the face of the crisis and pandemic are at “a stalemate,” because Democrats, who support and promote the new mail-in voting system, want to allocate millions of dollars in resources to the USPS, but have not yet reached an agreement with the current administration.
Trump argued that if an agreement is not reached between both parties, the post office will simply not receive resources and will not be able to establish the voting system they expect.
“If we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money, that means they can't have universal voting by mail. “They just can’t have it.”
Can blockchain technology ensure a secure, transparent and reliable voting system?
Given Trump's refusal to approve the financial resources necessary to implement the voting system in the months remaining before the presidential elections, and the Democrats' insistence on establishing this new system, many will wonder: Can blockchain technology really guarantee security, trust and transparency in an electoral process that involves more than 137 million voters throughout the country?
First of all, the USPS assures that the possibility of electoral fraud through voting by mail is eliminated by blockchain technology, since this technology allows “Tracks the various types of data needed in a secure manner, and allows others to easily confirm that the data has not been altered«. In this way, the Postal Service is committed to guaranteeing transparency in the electoral process.
Likewise, several election experts and political scientists such as Richard Hasen, from the University of California, and Michael McDonald, from the University of Florida, argue that fraud in electoral processes in the United States is very rare; Furthermore, both experts agree that cases of absentee vote manipulation are few, far between and easily detectable.
On the other hand, for the blockchain expert and CEO of Domain.Vote, Ray Chow-Toun, stated that blockchain-based voting systems are secure and reliable enough to be used on a large scale, but that neither society nor governments are ready enough to achieve this level of democracy and transparency in their electoral processes.
Likewise, several experts point out that Trump's rejection of this voting system is unfounded, especially considering that the president himself acknowledged that he has cast absentee votes through the mail.
More recently, Trump assured that whether it's called mail-in voting or absentee voting, Florida's voting system “is safe, tried and true.” Likewise, the president encouraged residents of the state of Florida to exercise their right to vote through the mail.
“Florida's voting system has been cleaned up, we defeated Democrats' attempts to change, so in Florida I encourage everyone to request a ballot and vote by mail.”
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