Boston-based companies Voatz Inc, and Clear Ballot Group Inc, have collaborated to explore the potentials of blockchain technology for secure and accessible remote voting in elections.

Voatz, an innovative and highly secure mobile voting platform, will bring an open source blockchain platform that is designed for secure remote voting via smartphones and tablets. This platform has been already piloted in various private and municipal elections last year.

National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) meetings that will be held from February 15-17, 2017 in Washington D.C, will see demonstrations on important portions of the user interface and the blockchain technology by Voatz.

“Both companies recognize that there are a number of questions that must be adequately addressed before a large-scale deployment of remote voting is possible.  These include end-to-end verification, voter anonymity, authentication, security, cost, ease of deployment, scalability, user experience and most importantly the public trust.  I strongly believe that this partnership puts us in a great position to address these challenges to enable millions of citizens to benefit from the convenience and security offered by this new technology paradigm,” Nimit Sawhney, co-founder, and CEO of Voatz, said.

Clear Ballot, a leader in election management innovation, has offered the Voatz team with the knowledge of election industry, market requirements, and sample election database. This dataset allows Voatz’s engineers to understand and create support for the complexities of real-time election scenario.

Both the partners are working together to tackle the complex problem of secure and accessible remote voting.

“Innovation in elections takes too long and there are too many barriers to entry in this market. I am convinced that the fastest way to accelerate election innovation is for voting system companies, like Clear Ballot, to help promising new technology companies with technical support, election industry knowledge, regulatory requirements and market access,” Larry Moore, founder, and CEO of Clear Ballot, mentioned. “Blockchain technology coupled with smartphones and tablets have the potential to solve these problems, but this pairing must be rigorously assessed before widespread deployment.  With this partnership, we break down the barriers to entry and begin the innovation cycle to address the need for secure, accessible, remote voting.”