This year's Iowa Caucuses were an absolute catastrophe. The New York Times called it "a system-wide disaster«. The Politician hailed «The death of Iowa» (as the first nominating event in the nation). CNN said, “The Iowa caucuses are simply dead forever.” Its credibility is certainly in question. But it was not the people of Iowa who failed.
A used App full of errors caused the total collapse of the system in full voting. And an obscure political consulting firm that designed it. But it is not exactly the president who could have prevented this. The Iowa State Democratic Party commissioned the application. This year was his first real-world live test at a real caucus.
- Ammous, Saifedean(Author)
A centralized app for voting
The party hired a former Clinton campaign veteran to build it. The name of the political consulting firm is literally “Shadow.” That set off a lot of conspiracy theories. Especially since the founder is married to a senior strategist from Mayor Pete Buttigieg. And Buttigieg won in Iowa this week.
But the failure of political actors to do the right thing in technology should come as no surprise. They are experts in electoral law and campaigns, not in code and engineering. This is why Yang is partially correct, but when it comes to who is designing voting software: you need the character of blockchain and apolitical software engineers to design and implement it.
Bitcoin It was one of the first manifestations of the blockchain. A transparent, independently verifiable, and immutable financial goal was the goal that shaped its design philosophy. But in the 2020s, democracy needs a voting blockchain, a transparent, independently verifiable and immutable voting record.
Voting on blockchain is the future
If elections are conducted with software, this could be one of the most effective ways to safeguard democracy. Today, almost all votes are entered and counted by electronic voting machines. A public blockchain ballot registry can provide the immutable trust that is required. Electronic voting machines have proven difficult to trust. They run on obscure, proprietary software. It's often written by barely disinterested salespeople, but groups invest in election results (like Shadow).
And they don't know what they are doing. Voting machines are vulnerable to the exploits of hackers. In 2018, an 11-year-old hobby hacker broke a Florida voting machine in 10 minutes at DefCon, a hacker conference in Las Vegas. But even if everything is fine, there is no piracy, and there are no software glitches, one can never be sure that the result is legitimate. No, unless the software that delivers it is free and transparent as Bitcoin. Only then can the results be trusted.
