Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think
- Netvote founder Jonathan Alexander is considering a rewards system in his blockchain-based API.
- Incentivizing voters with a tax credit could increase participation.
- Australia penalizes non-voters, but incentivizing the process might encourage enthusiastic responses.
While social media giants receive a fair amount of blame for disseminating misleading and false information in regards to elections, Twitter tried to course-correct in September with its “Be a Voter” campaign. Given that the platform is used as a pipeline to the American public from the White House, it’s no surprise users have become more active as we approach Election Day. In fact, Twitter says this its most active season ever, with over 10 million tweets about voting in October alone and 15,000 users changing their handles to include the word “vote.”
This doesn’t mean voting has gotten easier here in the non-screen world. States such as Oregon, Colorado, and California make it extremely easy to register and vote, while Mississippi, Virginia, and Tennessee are ranked lowest in the nation. Over 27,000 residents in Dodge City, Kansas, are being forced to travel outside of city limits this year — 59 percent of that population is Latino. If you’re Native American in North Dakota, good luck even casting a ballot. And in Texas, early voters had their choices “flipped” because they submitted their ballots “too quickly.”
Poor design is one reason this occurs, another reason we need better voting solutions.
Jonathan Alexander is the founder and director of Netvote, an open source voting protocol available on public and private blockchains. During my recent talk with him, he said there’s two key technical aspects to increasing voter participation that blockchain can address: accessibility and ease of use.Both of these rely on our main vehicle for communication: our phones. The accessibility piece can be managed with emerging blockchain-based digital identity platforms that use biometrics to ensure security (such as lifeID). Ease of use — well, it would be much easier to vote from your phone than traveling by bus outside of your town’s limits, then walking a mile on terrain with no sidewalks with thousands of other registrants, as Dodge City residents will be forced to do on Tuesday.
Photo: Arnaud Jaegers / Unsplash
Alexander mentions that security and access can be addressed with technology. Enthusiasm, however, is another story. That is why he presents a controversial idea:
We have been building into the platform a capability to offer voters some kind of reward for participation. Obviously not a reward for voting a specific way, but…
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