Saratov Oblast in Russia Conducts Election on the Blockchain with Thousands of Participants

A new blockchain-based election has been held in the Saratov Oblast in Russia. This was the largest blockchain-powered election on the blockchain. In order to create the necessary framework for this election, the cybersecurity company from Russia, Kaspersky Labs, developed the Polys online voting platform.

The company explains that the platform allows for a secure, anonymous and scalable online voting. Furthermore, the results are protected ensuring voter anonymity and integrity of the results. So as to run, the platform uses Ethereum-based smart contracts.

As reported by CNews, more than 45 constituencies in the Saratov Oblast were able to vote with this innovative system. It was possible for citizens to cast their vote using just a smartphone. The voting process took around 7 hours since the beginning until they finished counting the votes.

At the same time, in this election, voters had to decide whether they want to use the new blockchain-based system for future elections or not. The results were surprising because 83% of the participants answered that they would like to vote once again using this system.

Kaspersky is trying to expand to other countries with this blockchain system for elections. Nevertheless, the main market remains Europe since the United States might not trust a Russian company. There are some allegations that Russia interfered in the United States elections from 2016.

There are other examples around the world that have been using blockchain technology in elections. Earlier this year, the city of Zug conducted a blockchain-based test vote allowing users to vote with their smartphones using an already existing application.

In Russia, Moscow has also implemented an Ethereum Voting System allowing citizens to vote on the Active Citizen program. Active Citizen was launched back in 2014 and allowed users to vote for different issues related to the city.

In the future, many other municipalities and countries could start implementing blockchain-based voting systems. This would certainly increase transparency in a tumultuous world.