Blockchain adoption in e-democracy: The case Of e-voting

Blockchain technology emerged into commerce as the basis of a cryptocurrency named Bitcoin (Nakamoto, 2008). The technology since has been relied upon to conduct transactions without the need of a third party. The basis of a blockchain is a distributed ledger that can track and verify transactions (Milovich et al., 2020). This creates a chain of blocks where each block can verify the previous one in a synchronized and sequential manner and get validated by the users on the network. Additionally, once a block of information is added to the chain, it becomes a permutant record that cannot be altered or removed (Milovich et al., 2020). Transactions in a blockchain are verified against any changes using a decentralized database across multiple participants in the network. Those participants are called nodes, and they add and validate the blocks in the blockchain (Beck et al., 2018). Each block is timestamped and contains a hash that identifies it, along with another hash that identifies the previous block, thus forming a blockchain (Nakamoto, 2008). Using such a completely peer-to-peer technology can overcome limitations that exist in centralized database structures (Nakamoto, 2008; Milovich et al., 2020) which led to the believe that the blockchain technology is a disruptive innovation that results in new ways of conducting businesses (Beck et al., 2018). Literature wise, there is a lack of research that tackles how blockchain technology affects individuals intention to use e-voting. Individuals may be hesitant to use e-voting because of 1) they dont trust electronic voting system as the vote could be changed easier than paper-based voting system; 2) the electronic voting system may be considered vulnerable as it can be exposed to different security threats over the Internet. Blockchain systems can provide a direct execution of transactions between the partners and an instant tracking and monitoring. And so data transparency and availability are better manifested (Lacity, 2018). Integrating blockchain to e-voting system can address many concerns raised by the public and increase the participation rate in voting. Hence, exploring individuals attitude and intention towards using blockchain voting system is a timely and important topic.