There is good news for the disabled voters in Utah County. Utah County plans to allow the disabled voters to use a blockchain-based mobile application to cast their votes in the November municipal elections. Utah County ranks third in the list, in partnering with Tusk Philanthropies, a non-profit organization that focusses on expanding the mobile voting nationality. The county chose to imbibe blockchain technology in voting, after the NCC or the National Cybersecurity Centre completed an audit of the August municipal election using blockchain technology, and found it absolutely accurate.
Using the mobile applications also eases the labor-intensive process for dealing with absentee ballots. With this initiative, Utah County of USA plans to offer active-duty military dependents and also other expats to participate in the upcoming municipal elections by using a mobile app Voatz.
Voatz was previously used in elections in Denver and West Virginia. As such, the Utah County’s experiment with the Voatz app is funded by Bradley Tusk, a popular venture capitalist who invested in Uber. Voatz is the most secure application that ensures a safe submission of ballots. The app uses facial recognition and multifactor authentication that allow eligible users to access and submit their ballots. Before this mobile application was implemented, the casting of votes happened through email and there was no way to authenticate whether the eligible candidates are casting their votes or not, or whether the email id is being hacked or not.
In support to this mobile voting project using blockchain technology, Michela Menting, the director of ABI research commented,
“I think there is certainly potential to extend such technology to the general public, but it is always contingent on succeeding in smaller focus groups first, and especially those which may often find it more difficult to vote – due to location or disability as in this example.”
