South Korea may establish a new blockchain-based voting system if the trial for a system based on distributed ledger technology results in success. The Korea Times reports that the development of the blockchain voting system will be completed in January. The goal of   South Korea’s National Election Commission and the Ministry of Science and ICT potentially new voting system is to enhance the security and reliability of online voting success.

“We expect the blockchain-based voting system to enhance the reliability of voting. The ministry will continue to support the application of blockchain technology to actively utilize it in areas that require reliability,” Kim Jeong-won, an official at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said.

In addition to preventing the falsification of votes, the system is expected to enable candidates and observers to access data. According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, the system will apply to all stages of online voting. If the trial goes successfully, the ministry and the election body will integrate it with South Korea’s online voting system, K-voting.

However, it is important to note that this is not the first time that blockchain-based voting has been attempted. The country’s Gyeonggi-do Province utilized a blockchain-based voting system in March of 2017, in concluding which community projects to prioritize in the budget. Although, the budget was on a small scale of nearly 9,000 residents who participated, it did not refrain officials in the province from predicting the “revolutionary impact blockchain technology will have on the world,” CCN reports.

“Blockchains will change the world within a few years just as smart-phones did. We can complement the limits of representative democracy with some direct democracy systems by using blockchains, the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Nam Kyung-pil, an official in the provincial government of Gyeonggi-do, said.