It has been recently revealed that the Ukraine Central Election Commission has been experimenting blockchain technology integration within the voting process. The details as to how far the experiment has gone was first publicized by Oleksandr Stelmakh, who is an employee at the Election Commission. He took to his Facebook account to share the details and it seems that is he for it.

The experiment was done using the NEM blockchain, which was done as a “test vote”, to see to what extent the technology at hand can be helpful.

Stelmakh seems to be impressed by the results, here is a translation of what he considers beneficial:

“One of the basic useful properties of the block is the impossibility of making changes to the saved information, as well as the decentralized data […] These are the properties we tried to use to save the information […] of the ballet sessions about the calculation of the voters.”

He also shared that the entire project was done in “the test environment of the NEM blockchain” and it appears that “test coins” were used to conduct the transactions.”

Another area that he elaborated on involves the cost of using coins, which clearly is that of NEM’s native token, XEM.

An interesting point he did make is that:

“The cost of placing the results of the election in […] each police station in a public blockchain NEM will set 8765 XEM = $1227. As for me, it is a small pay for live saving.”

Clearly, he values the accuracy of the elections data over the cost to conduct them, which many representatives fail to understand when it comes to the use of blockchain technology.

Many have since commented on Stelmakh’s Facebook post, with many congratulating the efforts being made. In particular, consumers seem to be thrilled by the fact that changes to data will be highly unlikely, ridding the election system of its intense secrecy.

This is not the first time a country has considered the use of blockchain for election purposes. Recently, West Virginia saw its testing phase of a Voting App come to its final stages, which allegedly exposed that there were no problems. This is not to say that there wasn’t any opposition, as many still continue to doubt its entirety, however, it seems like Ukraine is all for it!

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