Blockchain
San Jose deputy city manager Rob Lloyd said Thursday he envisions a future where blockchain technology is used to vote in city, state and even federal elections.
“The 40-hour work week, workers’ rights, [worker’s] comp protections — those usually start at the local level and then work their way up to the state and are adopted by the federal government — I think the same pattern will happen with blockchain-powered voting,” Lloyd said.
He added that knowledgeless technology could be used to ensure voter anonymity while also ensuring that their vote is forever recorded in an immutable digital ledger.
Source: LinkedIn
Lloyd’s comments were captured on a Web3-focused podcast called “On Chain On Air,” which was hosted by Ashley Spradlin, head of education at Metis, an Ethereum layer-2 rollup. This latest podcast featured Lloyd and Professor Jonathan Reichental of the University of San Francisco, who are both based in and around Silicon Valley.
Reichental, who also advises governments on new technology through his company Human Future, recognized the potential of blockchain-based voting. However, there is one big problem, he says.
“The reality is that we are moving further and further away from electronic voting,” said Reichental. “The challenges that have arisen, or the appearance of challenges, have made people question electronic voting.”
“People are not ready for it and people are not going to accept it any time soon,” he added.
A July 2022 CNN poll found that Americans’ confidence in elections has eroded over time. Shortly after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, 36% of people were “very confident” that the election was representative of voters’ wishes. A year and a half later, only 16% were very confident.
The public trust dilemma also exists with blockchain technology. While built to create decentralized trust systems, the myriad human failures behind crypto-adjacent centralized players over the past year have led to a weakening of public perception: Voyager, Celsius, BlockFi, and FTX are just a few examples.
But Reichental said falsely confusing crypto speculation with blockchain technology is holding back potential breakthroughs.
“We need to be very clear that these are two separate items. Blockchain is the technology, the platform. Crypto is an application that runs on top of blockchain.”
Lloyd pointed to one such use of blockchain technology that has absolutely nothing to do with crypto as a form of money: marriage.
Utah County, Utah has opted for digital marriage certificates where couples can choose to store a record of their legal union on public Ethereum. In addition, Americans from any state or locality can get married online through Utah County.
“Out of all the places, Utah took the lead… and they said we’re going to allow digital marriages and they’ve actually unlocked more blockchain use cases than any other state I’ve seen,” Lloyd said.
The state service provider uses Ethereum because it is “a hundred times stronger than any redundant backup system ever devised,” according to the FAQ.
Identity management
Another possible use case for blockchain technology to conduct government business is what Reichental called “self sovereign identity” or SSI.
“[With] SSI identity management, we never have to worry about crypto and yet we use the very best blockchain technology,” said Reichental. “We can be authenticated without the recipient knowing any personal information about us.”
Currently, to access most government services, you need to log into multiple sites and remember all of your credentials. With a digital identity solution, Reichental said it would be easier to deal with bureaucracy because the government could easily authenticate you through the blockchain it decided to use.
Reichental also offered a hypothetical situation where a person is apprehended by a police officer. As it stands, an agent will take your driver’s license back to their vehicle to verify who you are.
In that situation, “you’ve lost control of your identity,” he explained. And in our society you constantly have to hand over identity papers to people.
“In a properly implemented SSI environment, the agent can take a barcode or QR code, and he or she never sees the information, authenticates against this blockchain environment being used, comes back and says, ‘yes, this person is who they say ‘they are,’ Reichental said.
Digital marriages, SSI, e-voting and paperless records could be the future, but according to Lloyd, who is actually responsible for managing government services, three criteria must be met before blockchain technology can gain widespread acceptance by civil society.
First of all, it must be stable. Second, vendor platforms need to start adopting crypto as a means of payment. And finally, there must be a regulatory framework, he said.
“When we see those three things, we know the industry is at a point where we can really push for it because we have the foundation upon which we can create and maintain programs and support them over time.” Lloyd said.