Much is made of how the blockchain could make back-of-house monetary operations more efficient and transparent for banking and other large companies. But one developer working in the blockchain world says there’s another area where efficiency and transparency could use some upgrades: voting.

“We have the technology to vote remotely, prove how we voted, and watch the election results roll out in real time. So why aren’t we?” Dan Finley writes in a piece published on Medium. Finley is a developer at ConsenSys, the Bushwick-based blockchain app developer founded by Joseph Lubin, the co-creator of the Ethereum blockchain.

To do so would require a digital ID for all citizens, something possible, perhaps, through ConsenSys-built app uPort, and voting machines with software open to public review, to ensure it had not been tampered with.

“If this is all possible, and our democracy hangs in the balance, why does The U.S. keep hiring private companies to build voting machines that we know are hackable?”

Recounts are a huge process. Green Party candidate Jill Stein is currently going through the process in Michigan and Wisconsin, and just announced this weekend she does not have the resources to continue the effort in Pennsylvania, where Trump leads by fewer than 30,000 votes.


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