Blockchain voting is gaining more traction in the United States despite the abysmal failure of mobile voting at the Iowa Democratic Caucus earlier this month. Companies on the forefront of blockchain technology realize the potential of the products they are developing to not only transform the global economy, but also the way voters cast their ballots. This week, Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity firm monitoring the cryptocurrency industry and emerging digital assets, did just that. The company unveiled a new type of a blockchain-based voting machine using Polys, the system released back in November 2017 designed to be an effective and …

India’s citizens will soon be able to cast votes from outside their city of registration thanks to a blockchain-based system. According to The Times of India on Feb. 13, India’s Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said that the country hopes to increase voter turnout with a blockchain-based voting solution. Using blockchain to prevent “lost votes” Arora said that, in the 2019 elections, 300 million eligible voters did not vote because they were either not politically engaged or were far from where their registered voting district on election day. The Times of India states that the country has over 450 million …

Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock and president of Medici Ventures, has issued a statement supporting blockchain in voting in response to the technology’s vulnerabilities claims published on Feb. 13. Emerging technologies got in the crosshairs of regulators when a mobile software application that had been devised to help calculate the total number of votes in the recent Iowa Democratic caucus reportedly malfunctioned, resulting in the Democratic Party having to delay its public reporting of last Monday’s results. But does blockchain really fail when it comes to elections? Following the Iowa caucus scandal, blockchain-based voting apps fell under scrutiny, which resulted …

The application that was recently used in the Iowa Democratic caucus was “not mobile voting,” according to major blockchain voting firm Voatz. The mobile software designed to calculate votes in the Iowa Democratic caucus on Feb. 3 has become the center of discussion after an alleged error in the smartphone app resulted in the Democrats delaying all public reporting of the results of Monday's caucuses. According to a report by the Associated Press, party officials in Iowa subsequently blamed an unknown “coding issue” with the software that led to producing only “partial and unreliable results.” As reported, the application was …

E-voting is gaining its place in the growing discussion over the use of blockchain. In our view, when technology addresses such socially sensitive issues, values step forward to the fore, together with the differences and clashes that they imply. Such democratic values convey the identity, pathologies and fears of the context from which they come. In that sense, the technical operation of designing and developing a voting system entails political and legal effects that make the matter case-sensitive, depending on the different territorial and constitutional traditions. Thus, we believe that the debate needs to be free of the idea that …

Several years ago, a blockchain strategy for Catalonia was revealed to the world, presenting a comprehensive outline of how a government — albeit a local one — can in time switch to being an e-government. Such a model would be backed by various blockchain systems that would accommodate the needs of the citizens for digital identities and voting, and could even be used to follow budgetary spending and recycling. It is a brave and ambitious plan — though, not one that many have heard about, likely due to the lack of information. The first rumors around blockchain implementation in Catalonia …

In the United States, Virginia’s state legislature looks to study blockchain to improve elections and voting. Prefiled on Dec. 27 and scheduled for offering on Jan. 8, a new bill requesting further study into blockchain-based elections has emerged in Virginia’s General Assembly. The bill, House Joint Resolution 23, asks the Department of Elections to determine whether blockchain technology should be considered to secure voter records and election results. What the bill could mean for Virginia’s elections The bill’s patron is state delegate and cybersecurity specialist Hala Ayala (D-51). It is currently waiting for committee assignment, and will have a long …

A group of students from an Indian university has created a blockchain-based voting system that enables voters to cast their ballots online. The voting system was developed by three students from Malla Reddy Engineering College for Women, local business and finance publication The Hindu BusinessLine reported on Oct. 21. The impetus behind the idea is to eliminate voting challenges in urban areas like long queues at polling centers. The system was tested in gated communities — walled communities that consist of small residential streets and include shared amenities — and reportedly demonstrated a high level of security and resistance to …

Two state counties in the United States are implementing blockchain-based mobile voting in the special elections in November. On Oct. 18, the nonprofit Tusk Philanthropies announced its partnership with Jackson and Umatilla Counties in Oregon to pilot the mobile elections platform Voatz. The pilot offers eligible voters to cast their votes using their smartphones, which are secured through blockchain and facial recognition technology. Pilot participants are mostly servicemembers overseas The pilot is only available to a small and select group of voters, allowing servicemembers overseas, their eligible dependents and other overseas voters to cast their ballots via the mobile app, …

Democratic candidate Andrew Yang says he will implement blockchain-based mobile voting if he wins the 2020 United States presidential election. On his campaign website, the blockchain advocate says he believes American citizens should have the option of voting on a mobile device — with blockchain technology used for verification purposes. “It’s ridiculous that in 2020 we are still standing in line for hours” Yang also believes that, in terms of security risks, most voting machines are just as vulnerable to hackers as modern technology is. He wrote: “It’s ridiculous that in 2020 we are still standing in line for hours …

Utah County becomes the third jurisdiction in the United States to offer blockchain-based mobile voting in their municipal primary election. Utah County follows West Virginia and Colorado One of the 29 counties of the U.S. state of Utah, Utah County will enable eligible voters to participate in the upcoming municipal primary election through a special application on their smartphones, according to an official press release on July 23. As such, the state of Utah has become the third state to allow blockchain-powered electronic voting in the country after West Virginia and Colorado. New blockchain-powered voting pilot continues till Election Day, …

After struggling to receive recognition of legitimacy within the mainstream zeitgeist during its sophomoric years, distributed ledger technology (DLT) now comprises the driving force behind a new wave of technological creative destruction. Today, we are going to take a look at some of the industries and processes that are most dramatically undergoing a transformation in response to the advent of blockchain technology. Food The opaque nature of global supply chains poses a significant challenge to efforts to ensure that the commodities, labor and inputs required to produce goods are from a safe and ethical origin. In order to tackle these …