Ukraine Central Election Commission Trials the Use of NEM Blockchain in Elections

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by Julia Sakovich · 3 min read
Ukraine Central Election Commission Trials the Use of NEM Blockchain in Elections
Photo: Adam Jones / Flickr

The Central Election Commission of Ukraine is considering a possibility to use NEM’s Blockchain for local and national elections.

As it has become known, the Ukrainian Central Election Commission is seriously examining the possibilities of NEM’s blockchain, which, they believe, could potentially facilitate and improve the procedure of local and national elections.

The head of the state register of voters Oleksandr Stelmakh informed his followers on Facebook that the experiment had been organized with the usage of NEM blockchain modules. Nevertheless, the trials and testing procedures are still in progress.

In July, Stelmakh invited his subscribers and Facebook friends to take part in a so-called “test vote” which had been developed in close collaboration with a local NEM Foundation group and presupposed applying of NEM’s blockchain platform.

In his post, Stelmakh described some advantages of using blockchain potential in the election process. One of its useful peculiarities is the impossibility of editing the information that has been already recorded and saved, which can be achieved owing to decentralized character of the network.

What is more, the NEM blockchain has an advanced API, and as a result users are allowed to receive necessary data in a much more convenient format than they used to in a traditional system. So, these very key features can undoubtedly contribute greatly to the transparency and honesty of ballot sessions.

Commenting their experiment, Stelmakh wrote:

“It must be noted that the experiment was held in the test environment of the blockchain NEM and for the transactions used by the test coins that were kindly given the representative of the NEM Foundation in Ukraine, Anton Bosenko. The blockchain test environment has 28 nodes. “

Based on the results that were obtained in the framework of the experiment, the head of the state register of voters announced the approximate cost of one node that can be potentially used for voting in each location. The placement of one node is said to cost roughly $1,227 which is considered to be a rather reasonable price for such an innovative technology.

Speaking about Ukraine, we need to mention that today its government actively works on making their country a crypto-friendly nation introducing regulations for digital assets. Nevertheless, the State Service for Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine has stated that there are no plans for regulating mining of virtual currencies at the moment. At the same time, the authorities understand the importance of legal recognition of digital currencies and are considering the possibility of recognizing cryptocurrencies as a financial instrument.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian experience in using blockchain for voting purposes is not the first case in the world. As it was previously reported by Coinspeaker, Switzerland had announced its plans to conduct the first blockchain-based test vote already in June.

Moreover, earlier this month, the state of West Virginia has revealed its initiative to offer military staff serving abroad to use a mobile voting app in order to participate in the midterm elections.

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