Ukraine Electoral Commission Trials NEM Blockchain for Voting Process

News and Analysis
08.08.2018

Ukraine’s Electoral Commission is examining the possibilities of NEM blockchain, which could potentially facilitate and improve the procedure of local and national elections.

According to Oleksandr Stelmakh, head of the State Register at the Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine, a test vote using 28 NEM blockchain nodes was created several weeks ago in close collaboration with a local NEM Foundation group.

Writing on Facebook, Stelmakh appeared pleased with the ongoing experiment, adding that voting is still open and anyone can take part in it.

“One of the basic useful properties of blockchain is immutability of the saved information, as well as the decentralized data… These are the properties we tried to use to save the information of the ballot sessions,” he said.

The trial is a result of a partnership with NEM Ukraine and involves a testnet with test tokens “kindly given by a representative of the NEM Foundation in Ukraine,” Anton Bosenko.

On the basis of current market rates, Stelmakh calculated the cost of installing blockchain voting in each polling station in the country would be around the equivalent of $1,227 per implementation. However, he believes that this is a “small price to pay” in return for immutable vote data protection.

Last year, Ukraine’s National Bank, the National Commission for Securities and Stock Market, and the National Commission on Finance Services Market Regulation said they supported the initiative to legalize cryptocurrencies.

In the most recent development, the country’s Financial Stability Council said it was in was in favor of treating digital assets like financial instruments.

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