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

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. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Electing the Mayors in Romania's Big Cities in 2020: Voter Turnout, Legislative Changes, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Local elections have been theorized by many scholars as lower rank or second-order national elections: they are less important, less relevant, and just not as interesting as national elections. In Romania, turnout in local elections was, until the mid-2000s, quite high, even if lower than in parliamentary elections. Since 2008, however, turnout in local elections has been consistently higher than in parliamentary elections. The electoral reform that started in 2011 had, over time, a negative influence on the electoral process in the local elections. In this paper, we argue that the transition from the election of mayors using a majority electoral system in two rounds to a single round has contributed to the decline of citizens' interest in local elections, exerting a detrimental influence on the quality of political representation in general. Despite the arguments used by many of the supporters of this electoral reform, that electing the mayors in just one round will generate an increase in turnout because the competition will be fiercer, the effect was the opposite. The year 2020 marked a historic low in terms of turnout in local elections in Romania. Analyzing the official electoral data at county level and for each county capital, we will show that the health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic had a minor influence on voting turnout. Instead, the specifics of the electoral law meant that, in the vast majority of county capitals, the turnout was significantly lower that the county average and the mayor was elected without reaching 50% of the votes (in many cases, the winning candidate failed to obtain more than 30% of the valid votes cast), which poses a major problem regarding the representativeness of elected mayors, as well as the stability and political balance within local political institutions.

Thailand in 2021: Demonstrations and Discord in the Depths of a Pandemic

In 2021, COVID-19 spread like wildfire throughout Thailand, with the government being routinely accused of mismanagement and facing two censures in parliament as a result. The military-aligned government also faced continuing protests against its rule. As the year progressed, the protests became more violent and spread to the peripheral regions of the country. Combined with the economic impact of the pandemic on the tourist sector, cracks are beginning to appear in the multi-party coalition. Support from the armed forces may also be waning, and there have been rumors of another coup. Nevertheless, imports and exports increased throughout 2021, and the opening of the country to 63 low-risk countries in November promises to ease the pressure on the government. The Thai parliament also approved a measure to reform the electoral system back to the one used in the 1997 constitution, under which the main opposition party, Pheu Thai, performed so well. Another election seems imminent, but it remains to be seen whether the electorate responds more to the intimidation, increasing support for the government’s largest party, the military-aligned Palang Pracharat—or to the student demands for constitutional reform, increasing support for opposition parties.

Political institutions and policy responses during a crisis.

How do countries with differing political institutions respond to national crises? We examine policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic in a sample of 125 countries, using high frequency data on two measures: (i) containment policies, i.e., closure of public spaces and restrictions on movement of people, and (ii) health policies, i.e., public information campaigns, testing, and contact tracing. We have four main findings. First, non-democracies impose more stringent policies prior to their first Covid-19 case, but democracies close the gap in containment policies and surpass non-democracies in health policies within a week of registering their first case. Second, while policy responses do not differ by governance systems (presidential or parliamentary), elected leaders who performed better in the last election, or face an election farther in the future, impose more aggressive policies. Third, democracies with greater media freedom respond more slowly in containment policies, but more aggressively in health policies. Lastly, more conducive norms (such as trust in the elected government) systematically predict a more aggressive policy response. Our results remain robust to allowing countries with different economic, social, and medical characteristics to have different evolution of policy responses. Our analysis therefore suggests that political institutions and the incentives of the political leaders embedded therein significantly shape the policy response of governments to a national crisis.