Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Blockchain-based voting in Russia fails

According to Russian media reports, the new blockchain-based voting system is not at all as perfect as supporters of this new [...] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1085437947660215829/

According to Russian media reports, the new blockchain-based voting system is not at all as perfect as proponents of this new technology would like. Voting with problems The electronic voting, which runs from June 25 to 30, is dedicated to residents of Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. It is also based on the Exonum blockchain platform developed by Bitfury. The solution allegedly helped encrypt voters' votes to ensure full anonymity, security and immutability of their data. Residents of Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod can vote offline (i.e. using ballots dropped into the polls) or online via a special website, which RIA news agency reported, however, was unavailable for the first few hours after the election process began. According to the official Central Election Commission, the outage occurred due to "peak demand" from voters. Meanwhile, Otkritiye Media reported that only 494 Moscow residents voted during the first hour. Thus, the excessive load should not have occurred. Meduza, a local news service, in turn reports that electronic voting showed "strange results in some regions." For example, nearly as many as 7,300 people assigned in the system to a polling station in the Troitsky Administrative District registered to vote online, despite the district having only 2,358 residents eligible to vote. The local election commission said it was a "technical glitch." A local journalist, Pavel Lobkov, meanwhile, described how he managed to vote through the system twice yesterday: he initially voted offline at his polling station and then online an hour later. CEC head Ella Pamfilova called Lobkov's actions a "provocation." Cointelegraph contacted Bitfury to discuss the reported problems, but the company declined to comment. The vote is important to Putin The vote is important to Vladimir Putin himself. This is because it is about constitutional amendments that will allow him to remain in the Kremlin for six more years, which means in practice that he can be president until 2026. It is unclear whether the technological problems are the result of "holes" in the blockchain itself, or just other technologies that were used in designing the system. Tags Blockchain blockchain vote blockchain russia

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