The GBA Voting Working Group consists of elections officials, solution providers,and industry experts. These experts create resources and are available to support the responsible adoption of blockchain enabled election systems. This page includes the resources GBA has made available to the public. This includes:
- GBA Publications
- Applications
- Experts
- Videos
- Blogs
GBA Publications
The Voting Working Group has and continues to develop a set of documents intent on driving the adoption of blockchain enabled voting systems. They include:
Remote Ballot Marking & Return Comparison
The GBA assembled industry experts to debate the security of remote digital voting at an event called Blockchain & Voting. Consequently, the participants agreed to draft a report comparing the functional and security considerations of available remote ballot return methods. The report can be downloaded at Remote Election Technology Report
Next Generation Blockchain Voting Standards
The GBA Voting Working Group is developing a set of next-generation election standards that are supplemental to the Blockchain Maturity Model (BMM) for each phase of the voting lifecycle.
EAC Recommendations
In the United States, American election officials typically trust election systems certified by a certified Voting System Test Laboratories (VSTL) in accordance with the Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG).
The current and past versions of VVSG do not support the use of internet connected devices. This makes it impossible to support citizens or our military serving abroad, nor people with disabilities unable to attend a voting place or use the available ballot marking device. In order to assure every citizen the ability to vote, election officials would prefer VVSG be updated to support the certification of Remote Accessible Ballot Marking and Return solutions.
To this end the GBA Voring Working Group submitted recommendations to the EAC to modernize the guidelines.
Download the VVSG Supplement for Remote Accessible Ballot Delivery Marking & Return (RABDMR) report. These recommendations have been submitted to the EAC and are scheduled to be reviewed by the Technical Working Group.
Applications
- Voatz – We at Voatz believe voting should be convenient, secure, accessible, auditable, and transparent. Voatz has completed over 90 elections in the US and abroad. For jurisdictions that permit electronic remote voting, election officials invite registered voters to download the Voatz’ app on their device. The eligible voter then creates an account using their mobile number and email, followed by a secure process to verify their identity. The voter then receives their mobile ballot, and uses their device to privately and accessibly mark and review their choices. When their ballot is cast, it is recorded anonymously and immutably on the Voatz blockchain.
Voatz uses a “permissioned” blockchain requiring the node operators to be vetted via an independent process. Typically, these nodes may include all the stakeholders in an election such as the presiding election authority, major political parties, independent auditors, etc. This reflects the way elections are currently administered and observed as well as supporting comprehensive post-election auditing.
(Voatz utilizes a multi-node Hyperledger-based permissioned blockchain network that is geographically diversified across multiple FedRAMP-certified cloud service providers and locations.)
- DeVOTE – An end-to-end decentralized trustless remote ballot marking and return system utilizing groth16 technology on the leading Everscale blockchain. Built by the Everscale community, it allows for satisfaction of the legal requirement of permanent separation of voter affidavit and voter bulletin. Piloted at the GBA Blockchain and Infrastructure Conference in Washington, DC, in May 2022, the system is open source, affordable and indisputable.
- Follow My Vote – Follow My Vote’s mission is to promote Truth and Freedom by empowering individuals to communicate clearly and, together, effectively implement peaceful solutions to societal problems. To this end, Follow My Vote (FMV) is striving to develop secure open-source end-to-end verifiable blockchain-based voting/polling software to be utilized in a variety of use cases, to include political elections.
Experts
GBA members have deep experience and knowledge regarding the legal, regulatory, political, and technical issues related to blcockcahin and elections. They are availalble as paid consultants or industry experts.
Consultants
The following individuals are available for hire to provide consultancy for organizations implementing blockchain voting.
Industry Experts
The following individuals are available for public speakin engagements, interviews and related knowledge transfers for teh public good.
Join The Team!
The GBA Working Group has people from around the world with an interest in and capabilities related to blockchain & voting. See the full list of members on the GBA Voting Working Group Page