Blockchain Technology Adoption for General Elections During COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Abstract

Blockchain technology is one of the fourth industrial revolution technologies that ensure traceability and transparency in recording electronic transactions. Though this technology has been applied in different domains such as finance, logistics and many more, its use in electoral system is yet to be fully realized. An electoral system hinges on fairness and transparency of voting processes. The traditional voting method involves the use of paper and ink system, manual vote counting and irregularities such as multiple voting, over-voting and delay in declaring election results. This results in a lack of trust and transparency in the voting processes. COVID-19 outbreak increased the pace of digitization in most fields, economic sectors and institutions. In this paper, we review the use of blockchain technology because it is a foundational technology that can ensure fairness in voting during general elections across the globe. We look at the case of Ghana’s electoral irregularities during the 2020 general elections. Ghana was chosen because it served as benchmark for most developing nations. Recent data were collected from an online data repository using keywords including blockchain technology, COVID-19 pandemic and conventional voting methods. The findings of the review suggest that during the year 2020 which witnessed the COVID-19 pandemic, no country in Africa adopted or implemented the blockchain technology in voting despite its ability to facilitate remote voting and curb the spread of the Coronavirus. This could be attributed to the fact that the COVID-19 outbreak took most nations by surprise and countries which have scheduled elections in 2020 did not budget for its use. The paper also provides shortcomings of the conventional voting methods and the capabilities of blockchain technology to address those shortcomings. These findings are imperative to form the electoral process of nations because of the underlying benefits of blockchain: ensuring transparency, auditability, traceability in processes, immutability and fairness.