A Melbourne-based start-up is seeking to use the same blockchain technology underpinning bitcoin to provide greater voting transparency in emerging democracies.

In just under nine months Indonesia, the world's third largest democracy, will hold its national election, giving more than 250 million residents the chance to vote for the next president and legislators.

Scandals and allegations of vote rigging over the last 20 years have plagued the fledgling democracy, which according to international election monitors has severely affected public trust in the election process.

Sorry, this video has expired Jamie Skella explains how to vote on the Blockchain platform

"If you utilise blockchain to submit a vote in the same way that a bitcoin transaction can't be reversed, it can't be changed, it's a trustworthy process based on a system, which is not owned by any one entity, not by an organisation, or a government or an individual," said Horizon State's Jamie Skella, who designed the platform.

"These are all pretty great properties for a digital ballot box, so in the same way the vote can't be maliciously tampered with, it can't be removed and it can't be changed."

Horizon State is preparing to roll out a community voter platform in the island of Sumatra, providing a test case for the technology, which it is aiming to scale-up for regional and national government elections.

Director of the Blockchain Innovation Hub at Melbourne's RMIT University, Professor Jason Potts, believes applying the decentralised, distributed and public digital ledger to voting processes is a logical use case.

Sorry, this video has expired Prof. Jason Potts says Blockchain has a far greater reach than just bitcoin

"For blockchain technology, the first use case was cryptocurrencies and money, but it's basically a record keeping technology, whenever you want to create, establish truth, social consensus around facts," Professor Potts said.

"The possibility of recording anonymised votes to a blockchain, provides a way to provide trust in the electoral process itself, to provide very low cost ways of verifying that these votes took place.

"So in emerging democracies one of the basic problems here is that often citizens don't trust government and this is a way for citizens to overcome that process by essentially not having to trust government to have to run the elections."

'Always looking at ways to improve'

Carla Chianese from The International Foundation for Electoral Systems worked as a voter education specialist in Indonesia for last month's local elections and in preparation for next year's presidential election.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 4 minutes 15 seconds 4 m 15 s Blockchain: the technology that could dramatically change the internet ( Margot O'Neill )

Speaking from her personal experience in the field, Ms Chianese said voter manipulation in Indonesia was high and technology and digital interventions might have a role to play in building greater faith in the democratic process.

"I think as election practitioners, we are always looking at ways to improve the ways elections are maintained, that they are free, fair and credible," she said.

"If that's through a new technology or process, or more research on behaviours, it's really important that even technocrats are at the forefront of thought leadership and share knowledge, protect the secrecy of the ballot and create an enabling electoral environment that is free from intimidation and violence."

The Sumatra project will provide a digital ballot box on mobile phones for members of Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, allowing them to vote on key decisions affecting their community, such as electing leaders, allocating funds and deciding on community projects.

Henri Morgan Napitupulu believes blockchain voting will create greater transparency in Indonesia. ( Supplied )

Horizon State is hoping to prove the success of the platform in Sumatra and scale it up for government elections in Indonesia.

"We're in interesting dialogue at the moment with national and regional governments, which are interested in the future to use of the technology in regional and national government elections in the region," Horizon State CEO Oren Alazraki said.

Horizon State was recently named one of the World Economic Forum's "Tech Pioneers", joining alumni including Google, Airbnb and Atlassian.

Mr Alazraki said next year the technology will likely be used for a national government's election in the EU — which would make it the first ever national government election conducted through blockchain technology.

Indonesia legislators were considering introducing a non-blockchain electronic voting system for the 2019 elections, but ultimately abandoned it, deciding it was prone to be hacked.

'People in Indonesia are sceptical'

Blockchain proponents believe the technology offers a more transparent voting process than the traditional paper ballot system. ( ABC News: David Lipson )

Sumatran businessman Henri Morgan Napitupulu, who is a local partner in the Nahdlatul Ulama project, believes blockchain's decentralised nature and transparency provide a point of difference from other e-voting systems.

"Blockchain is one of the solutions to eliminate to reduce the scepticism of the people in Indonesia," he said.

"The problem at this moment in Indonesia is there is a lot of fake calculations, fake information.

"A lot of people in Indonesia are sceptical and don't trust the election body."

However, Ms Chianese believes new technology is not a panacea and while it might provide greater efficiencies and transparency for authorities and election monitors, it may actually create greater suspicion among voters and decrease the secrecy of the ballot.

"They might not trust the system, because they don't trust that it's going to be free from hacking or manipulation of some kind," she said.

"Either because there is a lot of disinformation or intimidation of voters, so it really does depend on the context.

"And that's why a lot of countries tend to fall back on paper ballot systems."

The blockchain mobile voting app is being rolled out across Sumatra. ( Eloise Skella )

Professor Potts believes the transparency and security of blockchain set it apart from other e-voting systems.

"I think we are likely to see this in the use of places where democracy is most broken, where people trust it the least. This is exactly where we will see gains in using this technology," Professor Potts said.

"Blockchain tech is very new, it's very experimental; we've been doing money on it for about ten years now.

"Other use cases are really just the same application, but extended out, so we are starting to see companies like Horizon State, start to experiment in building these protocols and trailing these, but the underlying technology works."