Transparent Voting and Advance Secret Code In the book &quot;Introduction to the Theory of Computation&quot;, Michael Sipser writes

The field of cryptography, as this area is known, now extends well beyond secret codes for private communication and addresses a broad range of issues concerning the security of information. For example, (1) to allow electronic elections whereby participants can vote over a network and the results can be publicly tallied without revealing any individual’s vote, while preventing multiple voting and other violations; and (2) to construct new kinds of secret codes that do not require the communicators to agree in advance on the encryption and decryption algorithms.

(Chapter: Advance Topics in Complexity Theory,  section: Cryptography)
I am assuming that the example (1) refers to Blockchain technology. Are there any other ways of achieving the same?
For the example (2), I am not sure which technology is he trying to refer. Any idea?
I am assuming that [electronic elections whereby participants can vote over a network and the results can be publicly tallied without revealing any individual’s vote] refers to Blockchain technology. Are there any other ways of achieving the same?

Voting schemes using Blockchain technology mainly aim at avoiding a central authority. I doubt this is what's suggested, given the text, and it's age. I think it refers to voting remotely thru a network. A slightly later classic on this line of thought on electronic voting (among many) is Berry Schoenmakers' A Simple Publicly Verifiable Secret Sharing Scheme and Its Application to Electronic Voting, in proceeding of Crypto 1999.

For [construct new kinds of secret codes that do not require the communicators to agree in advance on the encryption and decryption algorithms], I am not sure which technology is he trying to refer.

The author likely has used algorithm where he meant key. He would then be referring to Diffie-Hellman key exchange. The book has a mere 9 pages on cryptography (including 3 of exercises/problems), and it's section on Public-Key cryptosystems does not cover DH (only RSA). I would not recommend it as an introduction to cryptography.