After conducting a pilot for a blockchain voting platform during West Virginia’s primary election, Secretary of State Mac Warner wants to further test the technology through a second trial during the state’s general election this November.
Facilitating the voting process via blockchain technology is a well-known use case[1]. The Swiss city of Zug[2], for example, recently trialed a blockchain-based voting platform.
However, many of the experiments with these voting mechanisms are not tied to governmental elections – and for good reason. Organizations and development teams want to minimize potential consequences, and official elections are certainly not a child's sandbox.
Enter West Virginia, which piloted[3] its own blockchain voting platform during the state's primary election this past spring. Secretary of State Mac Warner partnered with Voatz – a mobile, blockchain-based voting app – to trial[4] this new system among the residents of two counties who were deployed on military duty overseas (including spouses and dependents) and eligible to vote under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act[5].
Although participation through the platform was low (more absentee military voters from the selected two counties used paper ballots instead), the secretary of state sees potential in the technology. He wants to continue developing the blockchain-based voting process and plans on conducting a second test, this time during the general election in November.
The secretary of state's communications director, Mike Queen, told ETHNews that the decision to pursue this additional pilot was informed by four comprehensive technology audits, each completed by the Voatz team and other stakeholders following the state's primary election. He said that Secretary Warner's IT crew was satisfied with the audit results. "The audits have
