Balloted election services for the upcoming Texas State Convention of the Libertarian Party will be provided by Blockchain Technologies Corp, a New York-based software company and startup accelerator.
The company has developed its blockchain-secured voting machine back in 2015, seeking to overcome the “looming crisis” of America’s voting machine technology.
As stated on the official website, many of the American states use “antiquated and failing” machines which are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain and do not serve the purpose of fraud-countering. According to Huffington Post, 43 states are using systems that are at least 10 years old, and 14 are using machines as old as 15 years and more. Blockchain Technologies Corp responded to the problem by putting ballots on blockchain, making the election process less expensive and more transparent.
The convention of the Libertarian Party, which has decided to support the implementation of blockchain voting machine in the US, is to take place on 8-10 April and will comprise four distinct elections: Candidates for Statewide Office, Candidates for Statewide Officers, Candidates for Delegates to the Libertarian National Convention, and the State Libertarian Executive Committee.
Libertarians are the third largest political party in the state of Texas, and are being presented as “the only one that is consistently committed to a platform of peace, prosperity, and freedom for all Americans.”
During the election, traditional paper ballots will be used at the point of voters’ participation to avoid any difficulties and confusion. But after the ballots are signed, they will be immediately scanned by the voting machine and uploaded to blockchain where they naturally become time-stamped and tamper-proof.
Another precedent of using the distributed ledger technology for political elections has taken place in Utah, where members of the Republican party were able to vote at 22 March presidential primaries via a private blockchain powered by the British company Smartmatic.
The technology has already been tested and approved of by the Liberal Alliance in Denmark and the European Pirate Party.
The broader idea of putting elections on blockchain has been actively promoted recently by the Ethereum team.
Maria Rudina
