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The West Virginia blockchain voting pilot \u2014 Pilot Project: Secure Military Mobile Voting Solution<\/a> \u2014 is an excellent example. All it does is record the votes in a private blockchain, used as a database.<\/p>\n This was a pilot program to allow absentee ballots for military people who were eligible to vote in Harrison and Monongalia Counties, but were stationed overseas. The idea was to provide greater confidentiality, integrity and availability over using post, fax or email.<\/p>\n They used Voatz<\/a> \u2014 a private company running Hyperledger<\/a> on four nodes. So, like the World Food Programme<\/a> example \u2014 it’s just a single-user clustered database.<\/p>\n How it works,<\/a> per West Virginia Secretary of State’s office Deputy Legal Counsel Donald Kersey:<\/a><\/p>\n Voatz incorporates a series of various security procedures eligible voters must go through before they can even get the chance to cast a vote.<\/p>\n \u201cYou take a photo of your photo ID and then they take a selfie of themselves,\u201d Kersey explained. \u201cFacial recognition software is then deployed to compare the photo on the ID and the photo of the person who took the picture. Only if that\u2019s verified will you be registered to use the application and receive a ballot. Once you\u2019re in, it matches you in the application to you in the voter registration.\u201d<\/p>\n The process then involves further verification from the county clerk, staff from the Secretary of State\u2019s office and staff assigned to the effort at Voatz.<\/p>\n \u201cThen you receive your ballot and use Voatz to make selections by clicking on your screen,\u201d Kersey explained. \u201cAnd when you\u2019re done, you click the vote button.\u201d<\/p>\n Kersey said once the person clicks the vote button, a third and final layer of biometric security is triggered involving either a second \u201cselfie photo\u201d or thumbprint.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce it\u2019s good, the vote goes into a digital lockbox. This is where Blockchain comes in.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That is \u2014 all the hard work is identifying the voter. Then they put the vote into Voatz’ private database, and take at face value the hype claims of anything labeled “blockchain” being a tamper-proof “digital lockbox” \u2014 even as it’s under Voatz’ complete control.<\/p>\n Though you can view the block explorer!<\/a><\/p>\n Maybe the biometric identification could turn out to be interesting or useful \u2014 though testing it against already completely-known members of the military is definitely easy mode.<\/p>\n The only sense in which this is a win for blockchains for voting is that it gets the word “blockchain” into the press, and gives the starting signal for public policy bloviation.<\/a><\/p>\n The main function of this sort of trial is as marketing<\/a> for companies selling “blockchain”<\/a> as a slow back-end database.<\/p>\n Update, August 2018:<\/strong> West Virginia evidently liked the trial and want to use this system for the November mid-term elections.<\/a> This is proving somewhat controversial.<\/a><\/p>\n I’ve written a follow-up post<\/a> \u2014 the slapstick comedy horror saga of a plucky little blockchain startup who aren’t quite ready for every state-level hacker in the world, or more than eleven voters.<\/p>\n (well, that was unexpected. Hello, new readers! While you’re here, check out the news blog,<\/a> the book<\/a> and sponsoring the site!<\/a>)<\/p>\n
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