The Democratic Party of Thailand has carried out its primary elections solely on a blockchain. Due to this feat, the party has set history as the first ever major political party in the world to do so.

The party conducted its primaries by making use of a live e-voting network that was powered by the Zcoin blockchain. More than 120,000 voters were involved in the election, which was held between Nov. 1 and Nov. 9. The successful primaries also scored another feat by being the “first time that a major Thai political party selected its leader using input from the generality of party members ahead of the country first general election since the 2014 military coup.”

Some reports a few days back noted that “Rap Against Dictatorship,” a music video that became a viral sensation after it garnered over 30 million views in a space of two weeks, became the country’s first ever political resistance music to be filed on a blockchain after its YouTube version was threatened with government censorship. With the aid of a decentralized file storage system known as IPFS, an anonymous person saved a copy of the video in a transaction on the Zcoin blockchain which is based on the Zerocoin protocol.

Incorporating this concept into their primaries, the Thai Democratic Party also used IPFS to ensure that the integrity of election record was maintained. Voters who took part in the election were required to either vote manually at physical voting polls running on the Raspberry Pi system or through a mobile voting app that asked for photo ID.

Encrypted information packets, which contained voting tallies and identification documents, were then stored on the IPFS. Furthermore, the hashes were stored on the Zcoin blockchain, ensuring that their auditability and immutability were guaranteed by the election candidates and the Thai Election Commission.

Poramin Insom, the founder and lead developer of Zcoin, made his thoughts known on the election: “I am very proud that Zcoin played a role in making Thailand’s first large-scale e-vote, a reality, which saw greater voter participation and transparency. I believe we have achieved a huge milestone in our country’s political history and hope that other political parties or even the government not just in Thailand but in the region can look to using blockchain technology in enabling large-scale e-voting or polling.”

In summary

Blockchain technology has scored a major feat in Thailand. The country’s Democratic Party, which is the main opposition party, successfully carried out its primary elections on the Zcoin blockchain through a live e-voting network. The election registered over 120,000 participants as opposed to the 250 it normally records.

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