Page 27 - GCN, April/May 2018

Statuscheck BLOCKCHAIN
West Virginia tests blockchain-
based mobile voting
Military voters from two counties can cast absentee ballots via an app that verifies their identities and securely delivers their votes
BWY SARA FRIEDMAN
est Virginia is the first
state in the country to
use distributed ledger technology in a federal election to help secure the absentee ballots of military
voters who are deployed overseas. Beginning in March, service members from Harrison and Monongalia counties who qualify under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act have been able to cast their votes via a blockchain-based mobile app during the state’s primary elections. The blockchain- secured ballots will be accepted until polls are closed on Primary Election Day
on May 8.
Qualified voters verify their identity
via a mobile app that asks for a driver’s license, state ID or passport along with a current photo. Once the identity is confirmed, voters see mobile versions of the ballots they would receive if they voted in person at their local precincts.
The first user of the mobile voting application was Scott Warner, son of Secretary of State Mac Warner. Scott Warner is registered to vote in Monongalia County but is currently deployed in Italy.
In a statement, he said the application was “very easy to maneuver” and had a reassuring ID verification process. “When the ballot was made available, I just clicked through the names of the candidates,” he said. “I hit ‘vote’ for the candidates I wanted to support. Then
I used the thumbprint Touch ID on my phone to verify who I was. That was it. Pretty slick!”
Mike Queen, deputy chief of staff and communications director for the
“We are using a tamperproof ledger that ensures the anonymity of each ballot,” Voatz CEO Nimit Sawhney told GCN. “Blockchain provides an end-to- end verification trail where you have
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West Virginia secretary GCN: “We worked to do some due diligence to determine if blockchain is secure and whether a mobile app solution could increase military voter participation by making it a secure way to vote that is easier to verify. Over the past four months, we worked to create partnerships to do this on a small level where there may be 60 voters who qualify.”
of state, told
trust that
all of the data in the system is accurate.”
West Virginia is using a permissioned blockchain built on the open-source Hyperledger platform. To protect personally identifiable information, biometric data on each voter is deleted from the system once the identity has been verified. The only information kept on the blockchain is the anonymized votes, which are transferred into community records.
Voatz is training state election officials on how to use the platform while still complying with state election policies.
According to a sum-
mary of the pilot project,
previous absentee bal-
lot systems for overseas
military voters did not ensure anonym- ity, and many of those voters expressed concern that their mailed or faxed ballots might not be received in time or might not be counted.
West Virginia officials partnered with Boston-based startup Voatz to determine whether blockchain could help a small state with limited resources securely and efficiently manage a cumbersome election process.
“We recognize that government agencies want to be able to roll out this kind of platform and still maintain control,” Sawhney said. “Working with validators based in West Virginia, we are able to provide assurances that the equipment being issued belongs to the state and malicious actors are not involved.”
The West Virginia secretary of state’s office plans to release the project’s findings after the primary so other states and precincts can learn from the experience. •
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