Okay, that’s a clickbait header, but the technology behind Bitcoin—known as blockchain—can literally fix the election process overnight (or, at least, the second that a stable blockchain is up and running).
Last year (in this very publication, I believe), I suggested that blockchain could fix voter fraud. Some dorks in the crypto space told me that this was too complicated of an idea to sell to the masses. Flash forward to last month, and, according to Coindesk, the USPS is applying for a patent to:
"...combin(e) the ’dependability and security’ of the USPS with blockchain ’to prevent tampering’ of electronic ballots...saying in the filing that voters want a ’convenient’ means to access the polls, USPS offers a number of different methods to accomplish this objective."
Once again, shitposter Ray’s "dumb autistic ideas" are ahead of their time (to hell with humility, I’m done screaming at you people).
Fine, I’ll Bite...What Is Blockchain?
For those of you with hobbies and careers, you may not know why Bitcoin/blockchain is so damn special. As it turns out, anyone can understand it; you’ve just gotta think of "Bitcoin" as a brand, whereas blockchain is the underlying technology or product class—Bitcoin simply happens to be the first mover and most popular. If blockchain was soda, Bitcoin is Coke, Ethereum is Pepsi, Litecoin is RC, Dogecoin is Faygo, etc. Each of these "currencies" (brands) are basically just tokens that are stored, recorded and run on a ledger using the underlying product, in this case, that sweet, always-fresh, blockchain soda.
But, what is a blockchain, you ask? A blockchain is a publicly accessible, immutable ledger. That’s it. It’s a glorified bank account balance of every transaction ever conducted by anyone using said bank. For purposes of reading-about-technology-in-a-counterculture-porn-magazine clarity, visualize the "chain" part as a chain of numbers (001, 002, 003...) and the "blocks" as groups of transactions. Think of when you purchase several things at the mall during the same trip, then you see the charges for various stores show up all at once on your bank statement—this is a "block" of transactions that were verified as legitimate by Visa, for instance. The "chain" would be the transaction number (tied to a specific date, time and place that sorts the order of your transactions or "blocks"). Each block is built upon (or, at least affected by) the previous block, much like a bank account balance is affected by each transaction.
However, with a bank account, you have the ledger part of "immutable ledger," but not the immutable part. Think of a regular ledger as one written in pencil, whereas an immutable ledger is one done by a tattoo artist, using platinum for ink and witnessed by thousands of other people. This is why your bank account balance is not immutable—in the case of a fraudulent charge showing up (say, a $500 purchase of Uganda Knuckles stickers from Wish), the ledger (bank account balance) is compromised. To remedy this, a human being at your bank will audit the ledger and then they will decide—using their human brain and judgment—whether or not to refund the charge (thus retroactively "muting" a previous transaction on the ledger). For better or worse, this simply means that both Wish and Bank Of Whatever are able to reverse transactions, in order to adjust (mute) part of the bank record (ledger). And, as it stands, in the case of voting, this audit is done by whatever nothing-fifty-per-hour wage slave is responsible for verifying crucial decisions regarding who governs everyone else for the next four years.
In contrast to your Bank Of Whatever account balance, blockchains are run by complex algorithms, executed by endless amounts of miners, who all work on the same "block." Or, to put it simply, they’re all chopping away at the same stone to find gold. Once the stone has been mined, there’s no going back and there’s no putting it back together— each block is basically Humpty Dumpty and the miners are all the king’s men. If 4.2069 Bitcoin are sent to Address "L0Ln1c3" on July 31st, 2020 at 7:10pm, it’s a done deal. There is no "rolling back" the transaction (which, again, is stored on a publicly available ledger, so folks can verify this).
Further, with blockchain transactions, thousands of individual computers help to verify small portions of each block, which is the equivalent of a credit card charge being looked over by every employee at Visa, before it is ever accepted as valid. So, imagine having a credit card where you could not dispute any of the charges and the whole world could find out how much money you spent on Uganada Knuckles stickers from Wish—that’s blockchain (and, if you swapped Wish with Silk Road, this would be a literal example).
By this point, you may be wondering what the hell this has to do with fixing voter fraud...two months before the most divisive election since the 2007 Trailblazers draft. Sure, Bitcoin is associated with money, and thus, folks think that blockchain technology is limited to the financial realm, but much like how oil can be used for cooking (and, not just automobiles, lube or globalist warmongering), blockchain can be used for non-monetary purposes. The whole discussion surrounding voter fraud deals with fake ballots, multiple ballots, fraud clouded by secrecy, improper collection methods by human beings pushing ninety years old, etc. Every single one of these issues or risks could be eliminated by incorporating the immutability and public visibility of blockchain technology into voting. It’s basically a way to prove that X votes went to Y candidate and/or Z ballot, without exposing the first and last name of your hippie neighbor, who secretly voted for Trump.
Right now, you can look up any Bitcoin (or, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.) address and see every transaction on the blockchain, but you wouldn’t have any idea who it belongs to. For instance, here is a transaction (number "0x7c90272bee5ff6559...") from the Ethereum blockchain, accessible via EtherScan.info:
!!! INSERT BLOCKCHAIN1.JPG HERE!!!
As we can see, a user with the wallet address "0xe508a1e7284b75f..." sent 5,390 MATIC coins to address "0x5e3ef299fddf15ea..." on August 15, 2020 at 4:20pm. This is a "block" of one transaction from one wallet address (user) to another. Now, do you know whose name is associated with "30xe508a1e7284b75f..."? Probably not—unless it’s another one of Elon Musk’s kids. But, you do know that "Thirty Oxy Five Oh Eight" sent that exact amount of coins on that date.
So, with blockchain voting, a voter identification number would be stored on a ledger (similar to a Bitcoin wallet address). "John Q. Shithead" would be "a185b1ks89fbsf," and only people with access to voter registration databases would be able to connect these dots (as opposed to a disgruntled postal worker or ballot box maid deciding to rip open an envelope and read the signature). Basically, as far as anonymity goes, a simple algorithm would obscure one’s legal name from being able to be translated from the publicly visible number—think of your car’s license plate and how the numbers are generated by factors that have nothing to do with your first or last name. Anyone not directly involved in storing individual voter identification numbers would have no idea how their neighbor voted—but, everyone would be able to see how many people voted and, therefore, be able to see if the audited results show signs of a fair election (or, if a car with California plates with "Y0L0SWG" was somehow parked in your assigned spot).
!!! INSERT BLOCKCHAIN2.JPG HERE!!!
When it comes to the election process, for each vote (whether a yes/no ballot measure or a red/green/blue/pink candidate), a transaction would be stored on the voting blockchain along with the associated address (voter identification number). If a single address (voter) tried to vote twice (or "broadcast the same transaction" in cryptocurrency speak), said transaction/vote would be rejected. To choose your preferred candidate, you would cast a transaction (vote) to one of several addresses (candidate choices). Every qualified voter would be issued the equivalent of one "vote coin" per respective ballot measure and/or candidate, and to make it easy for Boomers to cast their votes, some overpaid tech nerds from San Francisco could create an app to make it as easy as buying Dogecoin on Robinhood (disclaimer: do not buy Dogecoin on Robinhood). Again, the back end of this app would be transparent, just like any Bitcoin wallet app being used by Zoomers on their iThings. So, as long as the whole process of voting is done using blockchain technology, it would not be "hackable" in the traditional sense (and the overpaid tech nerds who built the app would not be responsible for launching the blockchain, but rather, building a simple front-end app to access it, once it is up and running).
Even if vote-casting-by-blockchain is out of the question this late in the election game, blockchain ledgers could still be used to store, verify and validate the results of an election, after it goes down. By using blockchain as an alternative to—or, even an after-the-fact tool to audit the results of—a paper or screen election, the sum total of the votes stored on a blockchain ledger would be able to be audited against the voting population of any one district, state or even country. For example, if Bob Asshat claims to have received 10,000 votes, but the blockchain ledger shows that only 8,000 went to Asshat (and, 2,000 of Asshat’s supposed votes actually went to Jane Dipshit), then the election results would be re-audited to see if the people actually chose Dipshit over Asshat. On the other end of the spectrum, individual voters could look up the blockhain ledger and track their own votes, using their own voter identification number (that only they know), to verify that their vote ("transaction") was actually sent to the correct candidate ("address"). Even without knowing which address corresponds to which voter, anyone could check the "transactions" from a given election and notice, "Wow, Estacada has a population of 3,700, but somehow they voted 25,000 times" or, "It appears that ninety percent of District 23 voted for Chloe Clueless, but somehow she lost to Fringe Freddy."
If it sounds complicated, well, it is—but, birth control is more complicated than pulling out, smartphones are more complicated than pagers and cocaine is more complicated than the coca leaf. Sometimes, complicating things actually makes them work better. At the end of the day, just like Depo, iPhones and blow, we can make voting better by adopting new technology.
How can you help?
Well...to be honest? Buy Bitcoin. I’d like to see it smash 20K this year and Portland’s gonna riot no matter who wins, so what’s the point in even caring about voter fraud?
