Kaspersky unveils Polys voting machine for blockchain based elections

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If you’ve been following U.S. politics at all, you likely know how much of a mess the Iowa Caucuses were. The voting app caucus officials were expected to use failed, and new transparency rules revealed all sorts of errors by local officials. As states like Iowa and Nevada consider potentially moving to a primary for 2024, Kaspersky is hoping they might turn to their new blockchain-based voting machine as a solution.

On February 27, the cybersecurity firm revealed their prototype Polys Voting Machine.  “The device is the first of its kind to incorporate blockchain technologies and work alongside the Polys online election system, so all votes – whether cast at polling stations or on personal devices – are transmitted and processed together in a secure way,” the advertised.

The Polys system, which can be accessed either from their proprietary voting machine or mobile devices, allows voters to have their say in any kind of election in theory, from a school council vote to a nationwide election. Users vote by whichever method is most convenient for them, and in the case of something like U.S. state elections, paper ballots can be printed out for election commissioners to have their required paper trail. Otherwise, everything is written to a blockchain, and the election result can be determined with transparency and speed.

“From speaking to our customers, we understand the issues and inconvenience they face when organizing paper-based voting,” wrote Roman Aleshkin, head of product at Polys.  “As we see from our Polys platform, e-voting can solve some of these issues, allowing more possibilities for remote participation and even increasing turnout of younger people. However, if physical polling stations were to be closed completely, it would deprive and alienate certain groups of people from taking part in an election and making their voice heard. That is why we introduced our new voting machines. Working together with the online platform, they allow citizens to vote using the method they prefer, in a convenient and transparent way.”

This seems like an obvious improvement over the app used in in Iowa, which crashed when voter results had to be submitted to the Iowa Democratic Party. However, with the massive size of voting results needed for either a primary or a general election, state officials need a blockchain that can scale.

Not much is known about Polys private blockchain, other than it was privately built and they will at some point in the future allow users to sign up and run their own nodes. But perhaps the most important question is if it can scale to the needs of an electorate with millions of voters.

If the system doesn’t prove up to the challenge, governments may turn to Bitcoin SV (BSV) for a solution. With a blockchain that can scale to an unlimited degree, and with Tokenized already working on election solutions, BSV’s public blockchain will provide the traceability and transparency necessary for nation wide elections, and with the speed that the public demands.