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Could a Blockchain Stop Vote Rigging in Apartment Council Elections? How a Public Record Book Works, and Its Limits

· Use cases

Can you trust an apartment building rep election run on a blockchain?

Secretly changing votes gets hard. Who tapped the phone, it can't tell

Vote on your phone

ID check, one person one vote

Locked votes go on the book

Who picked what stays hidden

Many places hold the same book

If one edits it, it shows

Anyone can recount

Same answer every time

A picture to help explain. Based on Korea's Multi-Family Housing Management Act and the National Election Commission's online voting introduction page (checked September 29, 2026).

It gets hard to secretly change votes once they're written, but it can't stop the wrong person from tapping the phone. If you write votes on a blockchain (a record book that many people hold together), it's hard for anyone to quietly swap votes after the election ends. If someone does, their numbers stop matching the record books other people hold, and it shows.

But the record book can't know who tapped the phone, or who was watching next to them. That's exactly where fights break out in apartment elections, so a blockchain alone doesn't solve everything. The idea is the same for a women's association president election at an apartment complex, or a vote in a neighborhood group.

What's wrong with apartment elections now?

It's hard to get enough turnout, and sometimes the ballot box itself can't be trusted. In Korea, apartment complexes elect building representatives (동대표, residents chosen for their building or district to sit on the complex's residents' council). Article 11 of the Enforcement Decree of Korea's Multi-Family Housing Management Act says that even with only one candidate, a building rep can only be chosen if a majority of the residents (owners and tenants) in that district vote.

To reach a majority, some complexes go door to door collecting votes. In August 2020, the Anyang Branch of Suwon District Court in Korea ruled that a building rep elected through door-to-door voting, which the rules didn't provide for, was invalid. The reason was that votes could sway depending on how well you knew the person at your door. It's in a lawyer's column in Korea Apartment News (April 28, 2023).

The ballot box itself has been swapped, too. According to Seoul Shinmun (April 23, 2024), at an apartment complex in Seoul, during a November 2022 building rep re-election, a ballot box filled in advance was switched with the real one. The first-instance court sentenced the head of the management office and an election committee member to 6 months in prison.

That's why electronic voting is already in the law. Article 22 of the Multi-Family Housing Management Act lets complexes decide things like electing building reps by electronic means. Article 22 of the Enforcement Decree requires an ID check through mobile phone verification or a digital certificate. The Central Multi-Family Housing Management Support Center, on the website of Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, also runs "Apartment e-Vote" (아파트e투표).

What changes if you use a blockchain?

The biggest difference is that the people running the vote aren't the only ones who can do a recount. Today's electronic voting usually gathers the votes on one company's or one agency's computer. You have no choice but to trust that computer.

On a blockchain, many places hold the same record book. A record, once written, is hard to change later, and if someone changes it, it won't match the other copies. Anyone who gets the record book can count the votes again.

The hard part is the secret ballot. If you write "Unit 302 voted for No. 1" as is, anyone can recount, but the secrecy is gone. So each vote is written locked (turned into code), and who cast it is kept apart from what they picked.

The online voting introduction page of Korea's National Election Commission (NEC) says it uses zero-knowledge proofs (a technique for counting locked votes without unlocking them) for this. It says it recounts the locked votes without unlocking them and checks that against the first result.

Has anyone actually tried it?

In Korea, there's the NEC's online voting (K-Voting). It started in 2013, and Hankook Ilbo (September 7, 2017) reported that of the 2,420 votes run by then, 1,725 (71.3%) were for multi-family housing like apartments.

Blockchain came later. According to Kyunghyang Shinmun (November 28, 2018), Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and the NEC were building blockchain online voting and planned to try it first on surveys by the Korea Financial Investment Association, a Seoul National University blockchain society, and the Korea Internet & Security Agency. I couldn't find the actual test results in public sources. HelloT (June 23, 2021) reported that the NEC was building a blockchain voting system that more than 10 million people could use.

The current introduction page also says "blockchain-based, with zero-knowledge proofs." But I couldn't find in public sources who holds copies of the record book, or whether apartment residents can open it themselves.

The city of Zug in Switzerland started a blockchain test vote on June 25, 2018 and took votes for about a week. According to swissinfo (July 2, 2018), 72 of the 240 people who could take part voted. The questions were made up, and the results weren't binding on the city.

In the November 2018 election, the US state of West Virginia let voters living abroad vote with a blockchain app called Voatz. According to StateScoop (November 7, 2018), 144 people used it, and a paper record was kept separately.

Then in February 2020, MIT researchers published weaknesses in the app. They said that if the server was broken into, votes could easily be changed, and with some settings, who you voted for could leak. The company pushed back, but the state decided to use a different method for its May 2020 primary. That's in Nextgov (March 3, 2020).

What can't a blockchain fix?

The record book doesn't know whether the vote that went in was genuine to begin with. If a family member taps "vote" on a grandparent's phone, the record book still writes it down as one perfectly normal vote. The ID check depends on outside steps like phone verification.

When you vote at home, there's no booth. Someone can watch next to you or say "show me the screen after you vote." If the confirmation number could prove what you picked, votes could be bought and sold, so it mustn't be built that way.

If the phone or app gets hacked first, the vote is changed before it ever reaches the record book. That's what the MIT researchers worried about in the Voatz case, too. And if only the management office or one company holds the record book, the benefit of "a record book held by many" shrinks.

Older people finding it hard to use is still a problem. In a 2025 survey by Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (released March 26, 2026), older people's digital literacy level was 71.8% of the general public's. If you only open phone voting, some people may not be able to vote, so keeping paper ballots alongside it looks safer.

The law doesn't require a blockchain either. What the Multi-Family Housing Management Act sets out goes as far as electronic means and ID check methods. Whether to use a blockchain looks like something each complex's management rules and election committee would decide. That part is my guess.

How SASEUL runs on two record books is in SASEUL has two record books?, and the basics on SASEUL coin are in SASEUL basic facts.

Sources

I opened and checked three law articles, 8 news articles and columns plus an MIT news post, the NEC and Ministry of Land introduction pages, a government press release, and SASEUL's official explorer, official docs and official Telegram notices myself on September 29, 2026.

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