Utah County has joined Denver and West Virginia as the latest jurisdiction in the U.S. to implement blockchain-based mobile voting. The County will make voting much easier for military and dependents overseas in the upcoming municipal primary. Data from the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) shows in 2016 there were 3 million U.S. citizens living abroad who cast approximately 208,000 ballots. The overseas voter turnout was just 7%. It is just too difficult and unreliable to vote with paper ballots, especially for the military.

In 2012, 2016, and 2018 there were approximately 100 million people who could have voted but did not. Some were apathetic, maybe 10-15%, but most could not get to the polls or had unexpected last minute healthcare issues or duties of care or employment. The Boston based Voatz startup has demonstrated it can facilitate safe, secure, private, and verifiable voting using the mobile Internet combined with face or finger recognition and blockchain technologies.

Solutions such as provided by Voatz will be the default method of voting at some point. When I wrote Election Attitude – How Internet Voting Leads to a Stronger Democracy in 2016, I thought there was a good chance we would have widespread use of mobile voting by 2018. The various scares and resistance from anti-Internet voting activists slowed things down. The sooner we have modern mobile voting the sooner we can enfranchise tens of millions of voters and gain a stronger democracy. 

Source: Utah Becomes The Third U.S. Jurisdiction To Offer Blockchain-Based Mobile Voting