Ruling Russian Political Party Launches Blockchain-Based E-Voting

Published at: March 7, 2019

The ruling party of the Russian Federation, United Russia, has launched a blockchain-based platform for electronic voting, local news agency TASS reported on March 6.

United Russia has reportedly launched an updated website for its primaries with the added function of e-voting. The party’s head of IT projects Vyacheslav Sateyev said that the vote counting process will be implemented using blockchain technology. He also stated:

"Candidates will be able to fill in their personal pages on this site, including posting news, videos, photos, distributing their pages. The personal account is now integrated with all social networks. We have also made an adaptive version of the site for mobile phones."

Only citizens who had completed the authorization process on the web portal providing electronic state services can participate in and vote. The e-voting system is purportedly developed to improve election transparency and eliminate intermediates in the electoral process.

The primaries are a straw vote held by United Russia for nominating party candidates at all levels for the general elections. The decisions made in the primaries are not necessarily binding. In 2016, a number of candidates from United Russia who did not participate in the primaries ran in the general elections for the state Duma.

Last month, the city council of Moscow, Russia’s capital city, submitted a bill to use blockchain technology for an electronic voting system. The Moscow City Duma, a local parliament of the Russian capital, plans to protect the process and results of electronic voting in the upcoming elections through the use of blockchain technology.

In December of last year, Saratov Oblast, a region in Southern Russia, conducted a reportedly successful blockchain-based election with 40,000 participants. Participants voted to elect members of the local Youth Parliament via the blockchain-driven electronic polling system Polys, developed by Kaspersky Labs in 2017.

Earlier today, Cointelegraph reported that the capital and most populous city in the United States state of Colorado, Denver, will use a smartphone app based on blockchain technology for municipal elections this May. To achieve this goal, the City and County of Denver has partnered with mobile voting platform Voatz, technical provider Tusk Philanthropies and the National Cybersecurity Center.

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