Lawmaker Lee Sang-min of the governing Democratic Party Sunday proposed a bill to introduce blockchain technology in the election system.
Lee said the blockchain technology would guarantee reliability and transparency of the online voting. He said the time has come for Korea to introduce online voting, which would raise the voting rate, and save cost.
He said the current paper voting costs 5,000 won per voter, but the online voting would lower the per-voter cost to 400 won. “So far, Korea has not introduced the online voting because of its reliability, security and possible hacking,” he said. “Now the blockchain technology would upgrade security, reliability and public confidence.”
The most important thing in the online voting is to help voters save time, he added.
The Korea Election Management Commission has introduced an online voting system, called K-voting. The online voting is available to universities in voting for presidents and heads of student associations. The commission said the online voting had raised the voting rate to more than 80 percent, from the 40-50 percent when the paper voting is held.
The U.S. Virginia State has used the blockchain-based online voting for the mid-term elections for soldiers stationed abroad. Japan’s Tsukuba Prefecture has introduced the Internet voting for governor elections. Switzerland ’s affluent small city of Zug has already used the blockchain-based e-voting system in putting a referendum on critical social issues.
