Swiss City of Zug to Test Blockchain-based Voting Using Ethereum-based IDs
The Swiss city of Zug also popularly known as Switzerland’s ‘Crypto Valley’ will be conducting a voting pilot to bring the city’s polling system along with resident eIDs on the blockchain platform. The city of Zug is famously known for taking multiple initiatives of using the blockchain technology to streamline several administrative services.
According to the official announcement made last Friday, the e-voting pilot is scheduled to take place between June 25 and July 1st and will be tied with the digital identity trial which is currently underway.
Last year in July 2017, Zug announced its plans to launch a Ethereum-based application named “uPort” that aims at digitizing local resident’s ID information. The pilot testing for the same started in November 2017, and till now, the project has successfully managed to garner 200 new signups for this service.
With the help of these digital IDs, local residents will be able to cast votes over an blockchain polling pilot. The basic aim behind this pilot testing is to review the security aspects of the polling system and examine whether the platform is able to achieve "immutability, testability and traceability” while simultaneously maintaining the voter’s privacy.
The ability of the blockchain technology to provide immutable records while removing all the potential election frauds has garnered a notable interest from the authorities at different levels of the government.
Such initiatives of improving the administrative services using the blockchain technology are now replicated across the globe. Last November 2017, Nasdaq announced to be working with the South African capital markets for developing an electronic shareholder voting system. Similarly, in last month of May, Santander used the blockchain tech for shareholder voting at its annual AGM.
Earlier this year in March, Russia too announced using a blockchain-based voting platform to be implemented at a city level.
In addition to the Zug’s blockchain-based eID system, another national digital ID system called SwissSignwass has been launched by a private consortium of insurance companies, banks, Swiss Post, stock exchange operator, and Swiss Federal Railways.