Texas Libertarian Party uses blockchain technology to store election results

Rage Comment : The Texas Libertarian Party uses advanced blockchain technology to record ballot information, which makes voting more open and transparent, and is also a manifestation of politicians' accountability to voters. BTC founder Nick Spanos said he was attracted to Florincoin because it stores much more information than Bitcoin. However, voting fraud has always been a phenomenon, but the number of votes affected by this phenomenon is relatively small. Due to the development of a large number of blockchain voting applications, some pressure has also been exerted on politicians. Bitcoin has played a big role in the free market and its future is very bright.

Translation: Nicole

The Texas Libertarian Party will today record the results of a wide-ranging referendum on three separate blockchains, the latest example of a project integrating blockchain technology into the voting process.

The results of any referendums by voters in the US presidential race will be made public and recorded on a blockchain, with party leaders saying it is a new way for politicians to be accountable to voters.

John Wilford, treasurer of the Libertarian Party of Texas, told CoinDesk:

“Once the votes are collected, the voting information will be uploaded to the blockchain.”

The two-day event kicks off today in San Antonio, Texas, where the votes of 250 delegates and 100 liberal electors for the nomination will be recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain, a private blockchain created by Libertarian Party partner Blockchain Technologies (BTC), and the Florincoin blockchain.

Nick Spanos

BTC founder Nick Spanos said:

“Every vote is recorded on Florincoin, and we hash all the votes together and put them on the Bitcoin blockchain. But on Florincoin, you can see every single vote.”

Spanos said he was attracted to Florincoin because it can store up to 528 bytes of metadata, while Bitcoin only has 80 bytes. This extra space can store more voting information. Joseph Fiscella, who joined Florincoin after it opened in 2013, told CoinDesk:

“Florincoin intentionally created this data repository so that developers would always support this data and other blockchains could use it for value exchange.”

Congress

In order to make the conference attendees more accepting of the concept of blockchain, paper ballots will be used to record the votes. Then two scanners will be used to record and back up the voting information, and this backup technology comes from the patented technology of the third party BTC.

In January, an article about a patent application for voting machines was published, describing how to log in voting data using a personal key and how to publish the results on a distributed network using a public key. The issued voting data will be stored in the blockchain data controlled by the voting machine using a public key. Texas officials such as the chairman, vice chairman, secretary and treasurer will make the decision during the three-day meeting. Congressional representatives and presidential voters will help decide the presidential candidate of the national party.

From May 27 to May 30, the official national presidential candidate election will be held at the Libertarian Party Convention in Orlando, Florida.

Concerns about voting fraud

The Liberal Party’s voting method is still being planned, and Spanos, co-founder of New York Bitcoin, BTC, said that voting records on the blockchain could be tampered with by voting fraud.

Spanos said:

"Everyone needs to be very confident in an election, especially a candidate who is behind in the vote count. Confidence can help a candidate turn defeat into victory. But frequent voting fraud is a hot issue."

In 2012, Loyola law professor Justin Levitt, who currently works in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, said that over the past twelve years, the probability of voting fraud was only 0.000002%.

That's based on nine instances of voting fraud involving nearly 400 million people, but according to a 2014 Marquette University study, 39% of Wisconsin voters believe voting fraud affects only "a few thousand votes" in each election.

Apply pressure

In order to change this phenomenon, a large number of blockchain voting applications have emerged in the world. BitCongress in California uses blockchain technology to vote, legislate and make budgets. In Virginia, "Follow My Vote" integrates digital currency security ID verification into the online voting system through BTC.

Overseas, Denmark’s Liberal Alliance and Australia’s newly formed Flux Party have both shown interest in blockchain-based voting systems.

Back in Texas, the first day of the three-day convention ended with a presidential debate among five invited candidates: New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, anesthesiologist Marc Feldman, McCafe antivirus software founder John McAfee, liberal scholar Austin Petersen and pastor Shawna Sterling.

In the free market trend, political parties invited US presidential candidates to speak based on the intention vote, that is, let voters vote with their dollars. Johnson received $2,276.07 in intention votes, while Sterling received only $703.49 in final votes.

While Spanos and his team are studying the voting record process on three major blockchains to find ways to increase user trust, the Texas treasurer said he is focusing on a few other things.

In a conversation with CoinDesk, Wilford said he hopes the publicity will allow participants to put pressure on party leaders to take appropriate action.

Wilford said

“We support any free-market technology, and Bitcoin is definitely one of them. But there is still a long way to go.”