Indonesia still adheres to the provision that legitimate election results are the result of physical counting of ballot papers. However, digital records such as those carried out by Kawalpemilu.org in 2014 allow enrichment with blockchain technology.
The discourse surfaced at cyber security discussions held by Tordillas (Institute for Digital Law and Society), a think tank that focuses on advocacy for legal and technological policies, at the General Election Commission (KPU) office in Jakarta recently.
Nanang Indra Suyitno, a member of the KPU Information Technology division, did not deny that the number of servers they used were always attacked by various parties, especially in the election season.
"Some hackers just want to try out their abilities by doing deface. Some of them want to go further into the database (database) and try to manipulate its contents. Both are real and serious threats. "The slightest disruption can affect the legitimacy of the work process carried out by the KPU," Nanang said.
Sandton Consulting's Development Director Anton Dewantoro, who was also present at the event as a resource person, said that this is where the blockchain role can come in to enrich Indonesia's electoral security system.
Dewantoro said, the blockchain as the main tool for voting is currently not applicable, because the law still mandates that ballot paper is legitimate evidence in calculating election results. However, the opportunity for blockchain to be used as a tool to verify election results from each polling station is very open.
"With the current provisions, I think the blockchain is not positioned as the main tool for voting in the voting booth, but is embedded in the public recording system organized by kawalpemilu.org. The platform allows the public to oversee the implementation of the election by uploading a number of documents for the vote verification process. Well, all digital data can be stored on the blockchain. Because the nature of the blockchain is permanent, it cannot be erased and is transparent, so the data becomes valid and can be accounted for, ”said Dewantoro.
He added, the blockchain allows the parties involved and have interests in the electoral process to get the same reference record, so that it can suppress the occurrence of data denial due to the large number of recording versions.
Dewantoro hopes that in the future the Indonesian electoral system can switch to a full electronic system, so that the blockchain can be applied as the main device in the voting booth. Voters can even do it anywhere using cellphones with decentralized applications on the blockchain network.
Still green
"Blockchain technology is still green, so it needs to be further developed. In the future there will be more sophisticated developments. Yes, specifically the electoral system enrichment uses blockchain, in my opinion the KPU can start trying out the private blockchain capabilities, not the public type, "he concluded.
The reliability of the blockchain for the global economic revolution is indeed a big note by a number of research institutions such as pwc, Deloitte and gartner. However, because the rate of growth is only 11 years since its existence electronic money system peer-to-peer Bitcoin, the blockchain needs time for adoption and a higher level of security.
Not long ago there was hacking on the public blockchain Ethereum Classic and the EOS blockchain which resulted in a number of funds being stolen. Ethereum Classic (ETC) experienced a "51 percent attack", in which the hackers managed to do eleven blockchain chain reorganizations and double spend 88,500 ETCs worth US $ 400 thousand. Meanwhile, hacking on the EOS blockchain resulting in the disappearance of 2.09 million EOS (around US $ 7.7 million) from one EOS blockchain account. The main reason is the negligence of a Block Producer (BP) that does not renew the blacklist contents of blacklisted accounts on EOS.source