In 2023, we considered taking on investment capital and went through all the phases startups take in order to prepare for such a business move. We created a product roadmap documenting the technological advancements we need to make in order to realize our vision of developing open-source end-to-end verifiable blockchain-based voting software for use in political elections worldwide. Then, we cataloged the software products we could release to potential customers along the way and forecasted the resources we would ultimately need to get us to the finish line. From there, we produced a go to market strategy for the initial non-anonymous version of Pollaris, analyzed our business costs associated with providing our B2B SaaS products to our initial set of customers, and established pricing models that would enable us to achieve our target profitability margins.

In short, it was a phenomenal exercise to have gone through.

During this exercise, we learned a tremendous amount about business and what it takes to succeed. More importantly, we learned more about ourselves and what we were willing to go through at this stage of our business in order to be successful. Ultimately, we determined that it wasn’t the right time to take on investment capital so we decided to pass on the opportunity. At this point, we are still booststrapping the business on the road to releasing our MVP.

Over the last year, one of our cofounders and CTO of Follow My Vote, Nathaniel Hourt, has made meaningful progress on our MVP, the initial version of Pollaris, despite a few setbacks. At this point, we are extremely close to reaching a sell-able release of the software and will keep you posted in terms of when we reach this milestone.

During this same time period, I’m happy to report that I have made significant progress in working with my fellow colleagues in the Government Blockchain Association’s (GBA) Voting Working Group to pave the way for the next generation of voting systems to be used in political elections worldwide.

In addition to the work we have completed in the past, such as the thought provoking “Remote Ballot Marking & Return Comparison” and recommendations to improve the Election Assistance Commission’s Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, we released a Voting Supplement to the GBA’s Blockchain Maturity Model (BMM) which serves as the initial version of our standards documentation for blockchain-based voting solutions.

In 2025, the GBA Voting Working Group’s two main objectives will be to advance the adoption of the GBA’s BMM and to secure grant funding for the members of the group. We also hope to make progress with respect to our standards documentation which will forever be a work in progress.

The reality is that, in order to make change on a global scale, we must first make change at the local level. Therefore, another initiative we’ve established for 2025 is to secure the support of Local Election Officials (LEOs) for the adoption of blockchain-based voting solutions in political elections, as they are the individuals responsible for procuring voting systems technology using government funding. As we begin to secure support from LEOs, we’ll be in a better position to change or enact any laws, as needed, in order to allow for the use of this groundbreaking technology in our elections.

However, to make lasting change in the ways in which we are allowed to cast our vote on Election Day, we are going to need support from the population at large.

With this in mind, I have a favor to ask of you. If you haven’t already done so, please share a link to this post with your professional network, social media connections, friends, and family, allowing them to join us on our journey and fight for the right to securely vote from your own device on Election Day.

The post The State of Follow My Vote -> 2024 Report appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Polling for public opinion data is not the focus of our article. Our focal point is polling as a service. We hope you find the following information enlightening. Contact us if any information should require updating. 

Twitter Polling 

Twitter is the first on our list of top polling companies. They have become a go to social media website with 396 million active users as of 2021. Jack Dorsey launched the company back in 2006 and they released a polling functionality for users in 2015.

Twitter polls are an easy way to engage an online audience and gain feedback. They are free to create and run, but they are open to anyone on twitter that can see your tweet. Anonymity is preserved on these polls. Neither the creator nor the participants can see who cast votes or the choices they chose. (It is likely that Twitter employees can see past the surface level of anonymity though.)

A poll on twitter might be a useful tool for a brand, but might not be the best for deciding on a new proposal for an HOA since it’s broadcast publicly.

Facebook Polling 

Did you know that Facebook has polling too? They do. Facebook polls are a free feature that can be created on a user’s timeline, story, or business page. 

Similar to polls on twitter, you can learn about an audience, engage with friends and get results in real time.

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere operates out of San Francisco, California. Jeff Vyduna, Brad Gessler, and Sean Eby founded the company in 2007. They primarily run an online polling service for classrooms and audience response systems. Poll Everywhere takes advantage of mobile phones via their mobile apps in the classrooms of over 100 different countries. 

Poll Everywhere is one of the more secure polling options in 2023. For their polls and data storage they use AES 256-bit data encryption and store their data on Amazon Web Services cloud servers exclusively in the United States. Additionally, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issued a security certifications for their app.

SurveyMonkey 

SurveyMonkey is a product offered by Momentive Inc. Originally founded in 1999 the company now offers experience management and corporate insight solutions alongside its online polls. 

SurveyMonkey is on our list of top polling companies because they offer online polling in addition to their surveys. Most often a poll includes yes or no questions, where a survey asks more in depth questions. With SurveyMonkey users can run a poll with up to 10 questions before paying. Additionally, users can post polls online and within emails.

Crowdsignal

Crowdsignal is an app for both polls and surveys. The application is built by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce. Crowd signal offers both free and paid versions of their app. 

Jotform Poll Maker 

Jotform is a full-featured online form builder that includes online polls. Aytekin Tank is the founder and CEO of Jotform. He bootstrapped Jotform from the ground up in 2006 and now oversees its growth and development.

Types of polls Jotform supports: Image polls, scheduling polls, video polls, exam date polls, opinion polls, quick polls, voting polls, and straw polls. Jotform polls use a feature rich drag-and-drop poll maker and can be embedded on websites and social media. 

Jotform polls are quite secure, utilizing a 256-bit SSL connection, GDPR compliance, CCPA compliance, and the option to encrypt polls themselves. When users encrypt their forms and polls individually, Jotform uses the RSA-2048 algorithm while encrypting form data. Since the user owns the encryption key, caution must be used when storing it. If a key is lost, it is impossible to access the encrypted data anymore (much like encryption on a blockchain).

Typeform

Typeform is a software as a service (SaaS) company out of Barcelona, Spain that focuses on online form building and online surveys. The company also offers an application called Poll maker that allows users to get instant feedback and their app runs on any device. 

The Poll Maker app boasts about better looking polls and getting more responses. Their drag and drop poll builder and special design elements are their product highlights.

Alchemer

Alchemer is a software company based in Louisville, Colorado. Formerly known as SurveyGizmo, Alchemer allows clients to run simple polls and quizzes, but also sophisticated market research projects for large brands and clients.

Alchemy claims that it is larger than SurveyMonkey, but cheaper and less complex than Qualtrics. There is no information on security and data storage on their website, only that they have “all the guardrails to keep IT happy.” 

Slido 

Slido is a company that offers live polling solutions for businesses and events. They were originally founded in Slovakia in 2012 and now operate in 26 different countries. As of 2020 Slido is owned by Cisco. 

Slido takes security seriously by using encryption and storing data on AWS infrastructure in the EU. 

Mentimeter 

Mentimeter is an app that gives users the ability to create a wide variety of interactive polls. Their polls are mostly used to increase engagement for presentations. 

The company is based in Stockholm, Sweden and was founded in 2014. They offer a free version but limit the use of questions and slides.

DirectPoll 

DirectPoll offers a very simple live polling service. The app allows polls to be set up immediately and for free. 

Direct Polls are a product of Netcetera, a software company based in Zurich, Switzerland. Netcetera makes software for a variety of applications, including secure payments, digital banking and digital identity. 

Vevox 

Vevox is another live polling tool for presenters and has made our list of top polling companies. It is now rated number one for the best live polling on Trustpilot. Additionally, the Vevox app integrates with PowerPoint and Microsoft Teams. 

While Vevox can be used for presentations, it is also an asset for those who want to run townhalls, AMAs, and workplace training. 

Vevox is a product of Auga Technologies Ltd. Polls on Vevox are secured via encryption and hosted on AWS servers in Ireland.

EasyPolls 

EasyPolls is a straightforward polling tool created by ObjectPlanet Inc. It is free to use, but there are options for customers that need more features. 

On their about page, EasyPolls lists third party software and application frameworks used in their app. They don’t expressly say they are open source, but it’s nice to see all the aspects, languages and APIs in use. 

For security, EasyPolls encrypts transmission of data on pages where payment information is provided and keeps software up to date. They are honest about the state of online security today stating “no security or encryption method can be guaranteed to protect information from hackers or human error.”

Xoyondo 

Xoyondo offers two types of polling apps for users. Opinion polls and anonymous polls. Polls are free to create, but the paid version included an ad free experience.  

Xoyondo does not include any details about their security and what kinds of databases they use to store user information. 

Polltab

Polltab is an absolutely free to use online polling app. It is difficult to determine the company or individual that runs the website. Contact us if you know. 

Security on Polltab is not addressed, only details on how casting votes is based on IP addresses. Unique voter IDs are tied to an IP address. This means users on the same network (like a school or office) will need extra cookies or authentication for accurate poll results. 

Polljunkie

Polljunkie is a polling app run by eppyjerk.com, a small software house run by a man only named Jonathan.

The Polljunkie website does not give any information on their application security.

Elway Research

Elway Research conducts custom-designed surveys, key-person interviews, focus groups, electronic town hall meetings and workshops for organizations such as government agencies, major corporations, media outlets, non-profits, associations, and foundations. They list 356 different clients on their website that they have completed polls for. 

The company was founded in 1975 and is based in Seattle. Elway Research has previously received criticism for the accuracy of its polls. But as of  2016, the FiveThirtyEight Pollster Ratings gave Elway Research an “A+ grade.”

Ipsos

Ipsos is a market research and public opinion research company headquartered in Paris, France. Currently Ipsos is the world’s third largest research agency operating in 88 countries. 

Ipsos offers many solutions to a variety of customers. If you didn’t think one company could try and do it all, think again. Their products and offerings include: market strategy and understanding for brands and businesses, product testing, packaging research, user experience, pricing analytics, mystery shopping, customer counting, simulation stores, public affairs, corporate reputation, healthcare research, qualitative data, social intelligence analytics, observational data, digital platform data, audience measurement, customer experience, and automotive and mobility development research.

Ipsos is extremely large and their data and research solutions serve almost all types of customers.

Morning Consult

Morning Consult is a business intelligence company that has been operating since 2014. They provide global survey research tools, data services and news to organizations in business, marketing, economics, and politics. The Morning Consult has over 500 global organizations as clients including Nike, Apple, and Whole Foods among others. 

Nielsen Ratings

Nielsen Ratings, also known as Nielsen Media Research, is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theater, films, and newspapers. The company has been producing TV ratings since 1950, which makes them the oldest firm on our list of top polling companies.

Nielsen currently offers solutions for both panelists and surveys.

Trafalgar Group

The Trafalgar Group is based in Atlanta, Georgia and completes polls for both political groups and businesses. The group uses six different methods to gather data for their clients. These include live callers, integrated voice response, text messages, emails, and what they list as “two other proprietary digital methods” that they don’t share publicly.

John Zogby Strategies 

John Zogby Strategies is a full-service marketing and political consulting firm, created in 2016. The firm provides a variety of services. One of these is online polling services. 

Conclusion

As you can see, the top polling companies are quite competitive and offer similar features. At Follow My Vote we are working to make Pollaris a polling solution that stands apart from the competition. The number one way we are doing this is by building our application with blockchain technology. Blockchain databases provide many features, but the number one advantage in this case is data security. This is what the the top polling companies of today are missing. If you are looking to host an extremely secure poll, we think you will find our solution intriguing.

The post The Top Polling Companies & Apps in 2023 appeared first on Follow My Vote.

As mentioned in our The State of Follow My Vote -> 2021 Report, I’ve joined the Government Blockchain Association’s (GBA) Voting Working Group, in an effort to work with my colleagues from various voting related organizations to solve some of the toughest challenges currently plaguing the voting industry.

This year, our global voting working group made massive strides, developing a thought provoking “Remote Ballot Marking & Return Comparison,” which compared the functional and security considerations of available remote ballot return methods. The takeaway here is that, although the technological community at large has yet to develop truly secure end-to-end verifiable voting software for use in elections, the existing methods that are currently in place are even less secure.

Knowing that the voting industry is clearly behind in this regard, the GBA Voting Working Group is taking a leadership role in advising other organizations that develop voting system certification standards, such as the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), on how best to update their standards documentation.

With respect to the EAC in particular, our voting working group recently submitted recommendations to modernize what they refer to as Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG), as the current and past versions of VVSG do not support the use of internet connected devices.

In theory, should the EAC approve these recommendations, it would make it possible to provide citizens, such as military serving abroad or people with disabilities that can’t make it to the polls on Election Day, a more secure means of remotely casting their vote than they currently have today. We’re excited that these recommendations are currently slated to be reviewed by the EAC’s Technical Working Group.

At present, the GBA Voting Working Group is developing a set of next-generation election standards for each phase of the voting lifecycle (before the polls open, while the polls are open, and after the polls close). We encourage anyone who might have an interest in this initiative to get involved!

With respect to our software development efforts, while I’ve been paving the way for secure open-source end-to-end verifiable voting software to be approved for use in political elections worldwide, our CTO, Nathaniel Hourt has been burning the candle at both ends working to bring our minimum viable product (MVP) to fruition and he’s made some significant progress.

We’re extremely excited to announce that we now have the ability to create decentralized polling/voting software (or any other type of decentralized application (dApp)) in a way in which the implementation of the smart contract can be deployed to multiple blockchains without code changes. This will give users of our software the freedom of choice in terms of which blockchain(s) they’d like to store data on. To our knowledge, this a feat that no other organization in the world has been capable of doing. Nathaniel has named this innovation the Blockchain Abstraction Layer (BAL), which I think is pretty clever/fitting.

We’re also in the process of revitalizing our server infrastructure to ensure it will be ready and able to sustain our MVP upon its release.

In the coming weeks/months, as we work to put the finishing touches on our backend code and get a usable front-end in place, we’ll be sure to give you a sneak peek of our software in action, prior to releasing our MVP and announcing we’re open for business, so stay tuned!

The post The State of Follow My Vote -> 2022 Report appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Solana

Solana is a rather new open source project, launching officially in March 2020 by the Solana Foundation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The project competes to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions contending against platforms like Ethereum. 

Solana (SOL) uses a unique hybrid consensus model. Proof-of-history (PoH) is combined with the proof-of-stake (PoS) to reach consensus on the blockchain. Proof-of-stake has been used by many other projects, but proof-of-history is a bit more noteworthy. PoH uses a verifiable delay function (VDF) to assign timestamps on the blockchain in a decentralized manner. Ethereum, by contrast, uses outside programs to assign a timestamp so transactions can be validated in the order they were received. On Solana, this forces block producers to go through the VDF to get to their assigned slot and produce a block. On the Solana chain, data is inserted into the sequence by appending the hash of the data of the previously generated states. The state, input data, and count are all published. This creates an upper bound on time and since PoH can reference a previous hash, the lower bound time is also known. Therefore the VDF will indicate the exact time of any transaction. This entire process is important because it allows the Solana chain to speed up transaction speed. Since everyone knows the exact time, validation can be completed much quicker. Solana now has the capability to process up to 50,000 transactions per second. 

Solana’s future looks bright with their Proof-of-history innovation. They also boast low fees and a growing marketplace for NFTs. 

Bitcoin Cash 

Bitcoin Cash was created in 2017 as a result of concerns about the scalability of Bitcoin. Developers and Bitcoin influencers could not come to terms on the best way to scale the blockchain. Some supporters pushed for the Segregated Witness update while others called for scaling onchain by increasing the block size. A hard fork occurred and two blockchains emerged, one called Bitcoin and one called Bitcoin Cash. 

Bitcoin Cash is the project that chose to scale onchain, and is considered by many to be the continuation of the original Bitcoin project as peer-to-peer electronic cash. Bitcoin moved on with SegWit which has been described as inelegant and complicated, creating two parallel sets of rules for evaluating transactions, but ignoring one of them. SegWit technically breaks Bitcoin’s security by empowering miners and anyone who can coerce them to steal balances. according to the Bitcoin protocol, all segwit transactions can be spent by anybody with no proof of authorization. That means that literally anyone can make a transaction that spends the bitcoins in a SegWit address. The “witness data” (which is the rules for who’s allowed to claim the outputs, and the proof that the rules were followed on the inputs that claim the outputs) is moved out of the main block and replaced with a simple “anyone can spend me, there are no rules and no proofs,” and it’s up to miners to know what the rules really are, ignore the “anyone can spend me” instruction, and instead apply the rules from the witness data. Even so, Bitcoin has continued to gain popularity and value, dominating the cryptocurrency space. 

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has not experienced the same rise as Bitcoin, but has been innovating nonetheless. The principal goal of Bitcoin Cash is to provide more economic freedom to those who need it in the world. In this regard they have been making strides. These include advancements to the blockchain such as introducing Schnorr Signatures, the implementation of a token standard called SLP, and a new difficulty algorithm. Bitcoin Cash has also been successful assisting communities in countries like Argentina, Venezuela, and South Sudan. Flipstarter is another exciting project for Bitcoin Cash. The project is a noncustodial crowdfunding tool that uses BCH. This tool empowers the community to use its own means to fund valuable projects for the BCH environment. Bitcoin Cash is also making moves with regard to institutional investment. Greyscale is now offering shares of the Bitcoin Cash Trust to institutions allowing institutions to disregard custody concerns. A new fungibility protocol directed at obscuring transactions on the BCH chain called Cashfusion was implemented, which is a big step forward for privacy. A whopping $3.2 billion has been anonymized via Cashfusion. Lastly, Bitcoin Cash is now a competitor in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. General Protocols launched Anyhedge and Detoken, which are two new DeFi tools designed to operate on top of the BCH protocol.

Avalanche

Avalanche (AVAX) launched it’s mainnet in 2020 and has grown leaps and bounds in 2021. The project  is a layer one blockchain that focuses on decentralized applications and custom blockchain networks. Avalanche is competing directly with Ethereum in the smart contract space and hopes their higher transaction output will give them competitive advantage. (TPS is upwards of 6500 currently) 

What makes Avalanche special is their use of three interoperable blockchains to achieve true decentralization at scale. The three chains are the Exchange Chain (X-Chain), the Contract Chain (C-Chain), and the Platform Chain (P-Chain). The X-Chain serves as an exchange for the AVAX tokens and other assets on the chain. This blockchain is run by the Avalanche consensus mechanism. This mechanism works to allow all nodes to process and validate transactions by enlisting a directed acyclic graph (DAG) protocol. By doing this, transactions are processed simultaneously, and validators can be statistically certain transactions are correct via their random polling. The C-Chain exists to run smart contracts and dApps. This chain includes the Avalanche Virtual Machine giving devs the ability to fork Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible dApps. The C-Chain is operated by the Snowman consensus mechanism, which is the implementation of the Avalanche consensus protocol for linear chains. The final blockchain in the trifecta is the P-Chain. This chain coordinates the network validators and controls subnets. Subnets are sets of validators. The P-Chain also runs on the Snowman consensus mechanism. 

We commend Avalanche for their continued development of blockchain bridges, which allows the transfer of data between two different blockchain projects.

This completes our blockchain highlights post for 2021.

DISCLAIMER: We do not endorse these projects; we are simply recognizing that these groups have made significant innovations in the blockchain space. Use our contact form if any info about these projects needs updating and/or if there are any new innovations in the blockchain or open source fields Follow My Vote should be made aware of.

The post 2021 Blockchain Highlights appeared first on Follow My Vote.

It all goes back to the George Bush vs Al Gore Election of 2000, which was an extremely controversial election. Ernest’s father was a government contractor and his family was living overseas at the time. His only option was to cast his ballot via the postal mail. On Election Night, as reports of election results came rolling in, the outcome became highly contested and litigation ensued. When the supreme court ultimately ruled to stop a recount taking place in Florida, it made Ernest question what really happened behind the scenes, starting with whether or not his ballot was even counted, and everything about the United States government thereafter. At the age of 18, this was the first election he was allowed to participate in, and his faith in the democratic process was shaken to the core. It was at this moment he identified the problem (the need for a secure end-to-end verifiable voting system to make elections honest/transparent); however, he had no clue how to go about solving it at the time.

Fast forward to 2014, when Ernest learned about the advantages of blockchain technology and how it could be leveraged to develop a secure end-to-end verifiable voting system, we pivoted and this initiative became the sole focus of Follow My Vote’s business operations.

Upon making our plans public, the Pirate Party of Norway took notice, among many others.

The video was recorded in 2015 when Ernest was invited overseas to attend a national summit meeting for the Pirate Party of Norway, where he introduced Follow My Vote’s designs for a secure end-to-end verifiable blockchain-based voting system to Pirate Party members and citizens of Norway. And, the presentation couldn’t have been more well received.

20 years later and the story of US elections has not changed. The 2020 presidential election was just as controversial as the Bush vs Gore election. Donald Trump and Joseph Biden found themselves in an eerily similar position. While the reported results were not as close as the 2000 election, the contest was questioned just as much. Many people simply refused to acknowledge and believe the outcome was true. Even the Trump campaign would not concede to the loss and filed a total of 63 lawsuits in an attempt to overturn the results. Many people are still outraged over the conclusion and accusations have come from both sides. 

“The time has come to solve this problem, once and for all. The technology needed to bring forth this type of solution is within reach. And, the world needs it now more than ever.”

Adam Ernest – Co-Founder and CEO at Follow My Vote

When will we see honest and fair elections? Follow My Vote intends to make secure verifiable mobile blockchain-based voting a reality, so there will be nothing to contest. By using a distributed ledger, all participants will be able to verify the election results themselves and faith will be restored.

If you feel elections can be hosted in a modern and secure way like we do, please join our movement! You can sign up for our supporters list and stay updated on our efforts and progress. We also accept donations (Follow My Vote is a registered public benefit corporation) and we are currently recruiting development help through our Dev Challenge. 

Questions about our technology and software can be answered on our FAQ page and via our contact form. 

The post Follow My Vote CEO’s Raison D’être appeared first on Follow My Vote.

As we are researching and developing new platform technologies necessary to someday support the development of online voting systems, we take note of others in the industry working toward such systems; especially those also using blockchain technology.

One such company is Voatz, and today I’d like to highlight their efforts and share some thoughts about their work. Let me preface this by saying that this is just one man’s opinion and perspective. I have no affiliation with Voatz, and have not closely examined their work. My words here should be viewed merely as the casual commentary of an interested bystander.

Voatz is working on solutions for an online voting app using blockchain as a durable record of the election procedures and results. They are developing the procedures and workflows necessary to conducting an online election, and creating the tools and interfaces to administrate and participate in such an election, and showing the world what it could look like.

In the course of developing these procedures, Voatz ran a pilot of their app, giving voters and administrators alike a taste of what online voting could be like, and sometime thereafter, they came under fire for the security stance of their pilot system. A team of advanced security researchers at MIT wrote a paper decrying the Voatz pilot as an insecure approach to online elections and warning the public that such solutions cannot be trusted to uphold the operations of modern democracy. Shortly thereafter, security firm Trail of Bits published a report outlining vulnerabilities in Voatz’ application and infrastructure in greater detail.

These events seem to have led to a great deal of uncertainty and doubt of Voatz’ suitability as a provider of solutions in the elections space. If their pilot was so insecure, can the company be trusted to produce solutions for use in secure elections?

As one trained in the same kind of cybersecurity analysis and techniques as were employed by the research team at MIT, I would like to share my view on these events. Elections are enormously complex endeavors that require coordination of many people and organizations, and this succeeds today by using various different procedures and methods, but a transition to online voting will massively disrupt these procedures, and nobody is yet sure how that can possibly work. Voatz is helping to find ways that it can, even while the full security architecture of a final solution is still uncertain. To do this, Voatz is working with security standards well understood by the industry today, building voting system demonstrations based on the standards we might expect from existing major tech companies.

The MIT review raises legitimate concerns about the viability of Voatz’ approach for secure elections. In a sense, the MIT researchers are pointing out that while they themselves don’t know what the security architecture of a fitting solution for online elections would be, they can clearly see that the Voatz approach isn’t it. And while this may be true, it completely misses the value of Voatz’ contribution. Voatz is showing us how online elections can look, even before the full picture of how they can work comes into focus. It doesn’t exhibit the final security architecture, and it doesn’t need to: Voatz is building to the security standards we understand today to show us how the final solution could look tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the Trail of Bits report was commissioned by Voatz to evaluate the security of their pilot against the standards Voatz was aiming for, and the vulnerabilities disclosed by that report, while serious in nature, are not fundamental flaws, and should be relatively easy to fix.

In conclusion, we at Follow My Vote are grateful to Voatz for the work they are doing to further the conversation on how online voting solutions may look in the future, how online elections can be orchestrated, and what it will be like to participate in them. We look forward to seeing what they produce next, even as we are researching and developing the foundations and underpinnings that will eventually enable applications to be deployed meeting the full security, privacy, and end-to-end verifiability requirements necessary to support modern political elections online.

The post A Word for Voatz appeared first on Follow My Vote.

I also explained that until such a foundation is mature, our ideal voting system would be deferred in favor of smaller applications to test, refine, and prove out the platform.

Today, I would like to announce the first such application: Pollaris. Named after Polaris, the star which has guided navigators throughout ages past, this initial application will serve as our guiding light. Pollaris will help us to ensure that the platform we build adequately addresses the difficulties of developing blockchain-based applications while enabling us to test our design principles and guidelines to ensure that our solutions are indeed intuitive to people of all walks of life.

In practical terms, Pollaris is a simple polling application intended for use in communities to establish consensus on any issue they may face. The app will be used by administrators to gain insight into member sentiments on the issues at hand, enabling faithful management of the community’s resources in accordance with member preferences. Initial target markets for the app will include Homeowner’s Associations (HOAs) and collegiate student government organizations.

Pollaris will be developed as a fully open source solution, with rigorous security and transparency standards. The technologies will be open for all to inspect, deploy, and modify as they see fit. Follow My Vote will also offer a fully supported and hosted option for customers who lack either the technical expertise or the desire to manage their own instance.

To ensure that Pollaris is both a commercial success and an effective North Star for our platform, Follow My Vote is pulling out all the stops and challenging all of our assumptions about software design. We are dissatisfied with current standards of software usability and intuitiveness, particularly in blockchain software. Rather than simply point out problems, we aspire to reconsider everything about how software works and lay the groundwork for a new paradigm of human/computer interaction.

Many of the most well-designed and intuitive applications in existence today required armies of developers over sprawling timelines backed by massive budgets, and despite this investment the results leave people frustrated all too often.

Follow My Vote plans to address these issues using a combination of design and technology. First, we will design our software to be self-describing by incorporating detailed information describing the application into the code that comprises it. We will also create systems to allow people to inspect the elements and controls of the application to determine what they do and why they are in a particular status. The application will feature a tutorial mode on first launch showing people how to use the app and how to inspect the components. Finally, we will build a live support system directly into the app to provide human help to users on demand.

Of course, all of these designs require technology to substantiate them and we do not want a one-time solution, but a reusable new approach to developing software. Therefore while we will first build, test, and refine these solutions as part of Pollaris development, they will be generalized into the platform to serve future projects both by our team and others.

While Pollaris is a conceptually simple app, I hope I’ve made clear that there is a great deal of care and attention going into its design and that getting it just right is no small undertaking. Moreover, Pollaris is only the beginning; we have some really exciting ideas to build upon the foundations described above. It will take time to prove all of this out and I can’t say yet how much will make it into the first release, but I do believe when it’s done it will have been well worth the wait.

I’ll be writing more posts as we go forward to announce more about what we’re working on here at Follow My Vote and to go into deeper technical detail on our designs and our ideas, so stay tuned for more. Thank you for reading!

The post Introducing Pollaris appeared first on Follow My Vote.

We’ve come to a point in human history where faith in the democratic process has reached all-time lows, especially here in the United States. At Follow My Vote, we believe there is still hope for humanity in this regard.

Ever since we inked our patent pending designs back in 2014, we’ve had aspirations to bring our designs to life, enabling citizen’s throughout the world to cast their votes with integrity on Election Day. However, taking on such a massive endeavor comes with it’s own set of challenges.

We have learned and accomplished a tremendous amount at Follow My Vote over the years, while trying to bring our vision to life. Throughout this time period, we’ve seen various new voting systems come and go, all claiming to be better than the last. However, when analyzing these systems we’ve detected issues that need to be addressed before being implemented on a mass scale. Despite these issues, some of these solutions are actually gaining traction, which is also concerning to us at Follow My Vote.

We’ve seen widespread infighting in the voting space over the years, mainly between those that are all for adopting modern technology where possible to improve the political process for everyone involved vs those that don’t. We have technology providers developing and testing solutions, while university researchers speak out against their efforts and shine light on the vulnerabilities that exist with these solutions. There has been so much back and forth over the years and a lot of misinformation being thrown around that, as a result, it’s almost as if the majority of people have become convinced that technology cannot save us. We simply disagree.

With this in mind, we are releasing this IP today, as a gift to humanity, in hopes to restart the conversation when it comes to question: “Can ‘We the People’ figure out a way to securely conduct verifiable elections online?”

Let’s be real. If you could vote conveniently from your smartphone on Election Day and be reassured by the world-wide technological community at large that your vote was cast as intended and counted as cast, wouldn’t you? That’s what we are really striving for at Follow My Vote.

From Follow My Vote’s perspective we’ve already designed the voting system that, once developed, will have the upmost integrity in existence. Just keep in mind, it’s going to take us some time to bring it to life.

In the meantime, we encourage you to closely review our patent application as published on Google Patents and get involved in the conversation.

Upon review of our patent application, we’d like to immediately draw your attention to the figures or drawings, Figure 1 and Figure 2.

Figure 1, as shown below, is simply a list of key components that exist within our voting system design.

Figure 2, as shown below, showcases our (once patent-pending / now open-source) anonymous voting key registration protocol, which enables someone to have their identity verified for voter eligibility and subsequently be granted access to their eligible election contests in an anonymous way so that, when they cast their votes, they will be able to literally follow their vote(s) into the blockchain-based ballot box and confirm with their own eyes that their vote was cast as intended and counted as cast.

In short, the above figure is the secret sauce with respect to our invention.

Also keep in mind that this powerful protocol could be leveraged outside of the voting space/use case. Another way to interpret the way in which this protocol works is that, based on the identifying information submitted, this person is authorized to do [fill in the blank] anonymously. So, in other words, it could allow someone to submit an identification submission and have a public key anonymously registered to them, which grants them access to something they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, but we digress.

At this point, we’d like to turn your attention to the patent application’s claim language, as it has changed quite a bit over the years, due to shifting from a system and method patent application filing, to simply a method patent application filing. The updated language also more closely reflects the process outlined in Figure 2 above.

AMENDMENTS TO THE CLAIMS – FINAL

The invention claimed is:

1-29. (Cancelled)

While reviewing the patent application, please also take note of and credit the inventor’s of this paradigm shifting innovation that has the real potential to uplift humanity: Adam Ernest (CEO @ Follow My Vote), Nathaniel Hourt (CTO @ Follow My Vote), and Daniel Larimer (CTO @ Block.one).

As a final note with respect to our patent application’s content, we want to be clear that the way in which we’ve described how public key cryptography is leveraged within our system was intentional, although it is a bit atypical of those that have filed for and received cryptography related patents in the past.

To clarify, we specifically refer to signing transactions with a public key throughout our patent application’s content vs a private key. Here’s an explanation from Follow My Vote’s CTO, Nathan Hourt, as to why:

“With regards to the usage of the phraseology “the XYZ transaction is signed with the Voter Public Key,” and similar expressions within the patent application language, this is admittedly an unusual expression of the concept, and this stems in part from the fact that this particular cryptosystem is atypical among asymmetric (or public-key) cryptosystems, and also in part from the way our patent application endeavors to describe the technical processes in high-level, informative language but does not sacrifice accuracy to do so.

First, it is important to examine the unusual properties of the cryptosystem used in our system (and virtually all blockchain systems), namely ECDSA, and distinguish it from most asymmetric cryptosystems (take RSA as an illustrative example). In both ECDSA and RSA, a signature is generated by plugging the message and the private key into a formula, and out of that formula comes the signature. However, the verification process is quite different: in RSA, verification is done by plugging the public key and the signature into a formula, and out of that formula comes the message; however, in ECDSA (our cryptosystem), verification works by plugging in the message and the signature into a formula, and out of that formula comes the public key. This is a critical distinction: RSA and many other asymmetric cryptosystems cannot determine the signer’s identity from the message and signature, they determine the message from the signature and the signer’s identity, but ECDSA determines the signer’s identity from the message and the signature. In light of this, it begins to come clear how the package of the message and the signature could be described as being “signed with the public key” — the public key didn’t do any signing, but the signing embedded it into the message! The message and signature, by nature of the math, come with the public key — it’s just part of the package.

To clarify this meaning, consider a paper contract with a wet-ink signature. We could say “the contract was signed with a pen,” and this would be technically correct, but not particularly informative. We could also say “the contract was signed with the man’s name,” which is also technically correct, but offers a better description of the information conveyed by the signature. In the same way, the patent application says “the transaction signed with the public key,” it is not implied that the public key is the pen that created the signature, but rather that the public key is the information conveyed by the signature. If the patent application said “the transaction signed with the private key,” this would be similar to saying “the contract signed with the pen,” which is technically accurate, but less informative. In the same way as the pen attaches the contractor’s name to the document, the private key attaches the public key to the transaction. It is more informative, then, to say that the message is signed with the public key because this is the useful and relevant information conveyed by the signing, rather than to say that it was signed with the private key, which is not conveyed by the signature but was merely the tool used to make it.

The patent application attempts to clarify how this phrasing is intended in paragraph 0007 by saying “the public key […] signs the transaction, the private key is [used] to authorize the signing” — the public key is the information borne by the signature, but the private key is necessary to authorize one to attach that information to the transaction. It is important to be clear that the public key is the information borne by the signature, as the voter registration process described in FIG. 2 and paragraph 0019 demonstrates that the public key is what is registered to vote, and therefore a transaction with voting decisions must be signed, as per paragraph 0005, with the voter’s public key in order to be recognized as valid. This works because although the private key is necessary to attach the public key to the transaction, the public key is the only information which, like a contractor’s signed name, can be recognized as endorsing the transaction to have effect.

The intended meaning is that the public key is conveyed with the signature, and due to the mechanics of the cryptography, only one who holds the corresponding private key possesses the tool uniquely capable of conveying that particular public key, therefore the message signed with the public key must have come from one who holds the private key, and because the private key is never transmitted, it is extremely difficult for anyone to have the private key except the one who created it, giving the system and its users confidence that the transaction properly signed with a registered public key has the force and effect of the one who registered that public key, even though their specific identity can no longer be recovered.” – Nathaniel Hourt

What does all this mean for Follow My Vote and the voting industry at large?

Follow My Vote has always intended to publish our software as open-source; and, filing a utility patent application for our intellectual property was a strategic move from a defensive perspective.

After speaking with our patent attorney, we’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve done all that we need to do in order to protect ourselves from being sued from practicing our own invention down the line. With this in mind, and in the spirit of the open-source movement, we feel compelled to put our money where our mouth is and abandon our patent application as it exists today.

Moving forward, anyone that wishes to leverage our ideas in their voting system designs can freely do so; and, we hope they do! In other words, what this really means to those competing in the voting space is that these individuals and organizations can now freely innovate on behalf of “We the People” without the impediment of potentially infringing on Follow My Vote’s would-be IP, so that the best ideas can percolate to the top, be tested, and implemented over time.

With our release of this IP, we’re really hoping to spark a new era of innovation in the voting space and foster collaboration between the technology vendors that exist. We also hope to encourage a new wave of potential competitors to enter the voting arena and work toward building secure online voting solutions with true integrity.

For now, we at Follow My Vote have our hands full, as we work to lay the foundation for the development of a secure open-source end-to-end verifiable blockchain-based voting system. But, rest assured that, once we have the opportunity to bring our designs to life, we pledge that we will not attempt to market our solutions for widespread use until they have been battle tested by the brightest tech minds on the planet.

At the end of the day, the world needs to know it’s not about the money for us. Follow My Vote is about solving this global issue for humanity, once and for all, before moving on to the next biggest issue humanity is facing.

We are here to serve the people, plain and simple, and encourage you to follow us on our journey (and perhaps get involved) in the days ahead.

As always, if you are interested in exploring collaboration and/or partnership opportunities, please contact us using the form below:

The post Follow My Vote Releases Patent-Pending IP As A Gift To Humanity appeared first on Follow My Vote.

Over the past few years we’ve been contacted by media outlets, university researchers, county registrars, political parties, and voters alike wanting to know, “What happened with Follow My Vote?”

In short, we’re still here and we’re not going anywhere.

To elaborate a bit more, we wanted the public to know that, in November 2016, due to lack of funding, Follow My Vote hit the end of our runway, at which point my fellow Follow My Vote Co-founders, Nathan Hourt and Will Long, and I were forced to find day jobs in order to make ends meet.

Since then, we’ve spent our nights and weekends trying to make progress where we can.

Fast forward four years…

We know it’s been awhile since you’ve heard anything from Follow My Vote. But, we’ve been paying attention to what’s going on in the world and we wanted to take this opportunity to reassure the public that we firmly believe that there is still hope for a brighter future, a future where each and every one of our citizens has a voice and our votes truly matter.

We want the world to know that, at Follow My Vote, our mission is to promote truth and freedom by empowering individuals to communicate effectively and implement non-coercive solutions to societal problems AND we see ourselves as citizens of the planet, first and foremost.

It’s also important to note that, at Follow My Vote, we serve the people.

~So, why voting?

Being that we are located in the United States, we’ve decided to start out by focusing on building the solution we think the citizens of the United States need now more than ever, a secure and verifiably honest online voting system, one that provides greater accessibility to the polls on Election Day.

Voting is one of the key pillars to any society with a democratic government.

Therefore, citizens within democratic societies that utilize voting systems and processes that hinder accessibility and ultimately lack verifiability should be concerned. The United States is no exception. It goes without saying that, at Follow My Vote, we see the lack of accessibility / transparency with respect to the voting processes and systems that are currently in place in the United States a cause for grave concern.

In regards to verifiability in particular, with new concepts like those introduced recently by Fiscal Digital in Guatemala, we are seeing new models emerge for applying transparency to the legacy voting processes and systems in place today and applaud those willing to implement these types of solutions, ones that ensure electoral integrity and attempt to restore faith in the voting process.

Now let’s shift the focus of this article toward accessibility for a moment.

~Will Voting Be Handled Differently In The Post Covid-19 Era?

These are troubling times. While the world is still reeling from the coronavirus or Covid-19 outbreak, there is unrest all around us. Things will likely never be the same again, especially when it comes to voting.

Now more than ever, people are standing up and taking action for what they believe in. Citizens are being encouraged to vote as a way to express their opinions on Election Day. But, what happens when “We the People’s” vote is disenfranchised?

If you have been paying attention this primary season, you’re well aware of the debacles taking place at centralized polling locations. Several primary elections have been plagued by issues with the Covid-19 outbreak, such as the massive closing of many centralized polling locations causing ridiculously long-lines at the polling locations that are remaining open, which is effectively disenfranchising voters.

Just the thought of catching Covid-19 at the polls is terrifying, causing people not to show up and vote and rightfully so. United States citizens, or any citizen of any country that hosts elections for that matter, should not have to literally risk their lives in order to vote. Thankfully, some legislative change is happening to address this crisis, as things are only going to get worse as we move closer to the United States 2020 Presidential Election AND there’s no telling if the situation will improve thereafter.

However, at the end of the day, Governors, Secretaries of State, Legislators, Election Officials, academics, cyber security experts and most importantly, the voters will ultimately weigh in and decide if / when the United States is ready for secure end-to-end verifiable mobile voting.

Despite not having every United States citizen onboard the mobile voting train, now more than ever, we firmly believe that the need for a secure and verifiably honest mobile voting system, one that provides greater accessibility to the polls on Election Day, couldn’t be more apparent. So, we’re staying the course.

~Is there really a need to bring voting securely online in the United States?

The shocking reality is that many United States citizens currently cast their ballots via postal mail, email, or fax. Why you ask?

A large subset of these voters are absentee voters, those voters that can’t physically make it to their designated polling locations on Election Day. Many of these voters are also Military Overseas Voters, those fighting for the United States in foreign conflicts around the world. And, as of late, vote-by-mail is simply not an option for these citizens, in particular, as international mailing operations have come to a screeching halt due to Covid-19 issues. This means that United States Military Overseas Voters are currently being forced to use incredibly insecure electronic methods of casting their ballots, electronic voting methods which have been approved for use in many states for years now.

To make matters worse, if you really open your eyes to what’s going on, one can see that the entire United States election infrastructure is falling apart.

We’re living in modern times. Modern times call for modern solutions. Therefore, at FMV, we firmly believe that if there is in fact a way to bring voting securely online, to address issues like these and others, we should.

To be clear, we’re not advocating taking away the right for United States citizens to utilize these currently approved voting methods, which are riddled with known security vulnerabilities through and through, all we are saying is that the citizens of the United States deserve better and we’re on it!

~What do you say to those that criticize mobile voting solutions?

We understand that there has been decades of opposition by certain university researchers and security professionals with respect to bringing voting securely online. Although many critics have made some very valid points about security concerns with respect to mobile voting solutions, the people need to start reading beyond the headlines they come across in the media and the conversation needs to shift from “Why Secure Online Voting Will Never Be Possible!” to “How Could We Make Online Voting Secure?”

This singular issue is much bigger than Follow My Vote. At this point, solving this technical challenge, meaning figuring out exactly how to build a secure end-to-end verifiable mobile voting platform, has become a humanitarian cause worth pursuing. Thus, we are encouraging everyone around the world to get involved in this project.

When it comes to the United States, we are fully aware that some citizens are perfectly comfortable with waiting in line to cast their vote at a centralized polling locations on Election Day or mailing in their paper ballot in ahead of time as a means to cast their vote in an election. However, we are also very aware that there is a certain population of United States citizens that would love the opportunity to vote conveniently / instantly / securely / verifiably from their own device on Election Day AND that population is growing.

We’re building our solutions for the latter group.

Just to be crystal clear here, we’re not trying to change the way anyone currently votes in the United States today. We’d simply like to provide United States citizens an alternative option for voting on Election Day and encourage those that care about electoral integrity to vote with integrity by using more secure and verifiable voting methods.

~When did this all start?

Although I founded Follow My Vote on the 4th of July in 2012, our technological approach to administering an election using blockchain technology (or distributed ledger technology) dates back to 2014.

This ingenious approach was invented during our time spent at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, VA. While exploring potential collaboration opportunities with Dan Larimer and the core developers at BitShares, Dan was the first person to introduce blockchain technology (or distributed ledger technology) to me.

Once I learned of this new technology and that it could be leveraged to develop a secure end-to-end verifiable mobile voting system, one that could provide greater accessibility to the polls on Election Day, we decided to make that our core focus at Follow My Vote and haven’t looked back.

From there, myself, Follow My Vote’s CTO (Nathan Hourt), and Dan Larimer began innovating. When we designed our patent-pending technological approach, we threw out all preconceived notions of voting systems design that had come before us, in order to have a fresh set of eyes on the problem.

The greatest challenge we faced was to design a secure voting system that incorporated an identity verification component and was end-to-end verifiable, yet anonymous, all while avoiding the creation of any single points of failure in the process.

The end result was our patent, which was published on Google Patents on 4-20-17. It’s also important to point out that, although I’m listed as one of the Co-inventors in our patent, along with Nathan Hourt and Daniel Larimer (CTO of Block.one), Follow My Vote owns 100% of the intellectual property associated with our patent.

~How does your invention work?

Upon review of Fig. 2 in our patent, you will see our designs for an anonymous voting key registration protocol. You’re eyes probably just glazed over as you read that. But, let’s do some unpacking there.

A protocol is just a process. And, when embedded in our voting software, this protocol allows a voter to have their identity verified, and be issued the proper ballot in an anonymous way, so that when the voter casts their ballot, they can quite literally follow their vote into the ballot box and confirm with their own eyes that their ballot was cast as intended and counted as cast. Furthermore, since all votes remain anonymous within the ballot box, all votes cast within our system during an election can be independently verified by anyone, which is showcased in our user-experience demo below:

When you think about it, this invention is truly revolutionary, as, to our knowledge, a protocol/voting system like this doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, even today.

It’s also important to point out that, when inventing our secure voting system, we decided that it was important to mirror the voting experience that currently takes place at centralized polling locations on Election Day, at least in the United States. But, in order to make the process end-to-end verifiable, we had absolutely no choice but to bring the system online.

Furthermore, when putting our thoughts on paper, our goal was to design the ideal voting system, one that couldn’t be compromised by any single actor involved in the election administration and/or voting processes, to include members of our own organization. We had to assume that if any single actor within the system can be a bad actor, they will. And, if history has shown us anything, it’s that people are fallible and can be compromised.

~What Follow My Vote solutions exist today?

We’ve designed a powerful protocol, but the elections grade voting platform itself has not been built. However, we have completed the beta version of our stake weighted voting software, which was integrated with the BitShares public blockchain back in 2016. This software demonstrated our ability to securely store voting data on a public blockchain. But, this software still lacks an identity verification component and our patent-pending anonymous voting key registration protocol, which are both needed in an end-to-end verifiable elections grade voting platform.

When it comes to developing elections grade software, security is the most pressing issue. Therefore, we felt it was imperative to establish our own security standards with respect to mobile voting system design. After analyzing the landscape for years now, we’ve determined that in order to build truly secure voting software, we’d first need to build a decentralized application platform that meets our security standards AND from there develop a decentralized application (dApp) for administering an election / a mobile voting dApp, which will sit on top of this dApp platform.

Now, building such a system will not be such an easy feat, as the dApp platform/mobile voting dApp is a multi-million dollar project that will likely span 2 to 3 years development time, at least by our current estimates. But we’re up for the challenge. Some people call us crazy. They think what we are striving to accomplish is simply not possible. Many of those same people called Elon Musk crazy when he committed to attempting the impossible by putting a man on Mars with his space exploration company called SpaceX. But, look at SpaceX now. Sure as Elon Musk, we are confident we can get the job done in time and with the proper funding.

~Will you need to raise capital to get the job done?

Follow My Vote is still very much a start up. We have yet to raise capital beyond a $50K friends and family round back in 2016. At this point in time, due to the sanctity of our current project, we are choosing to rely solely on grant funding to keep the business afloat.

To date, the majority of our time, effort, and operating capital has been spent on securing our intellectual property, developing our user experience demo software for our end-to-end verifiable mobile voting system, building our minimum viable product (MVP) for our stake weighted voting system, and educating the public of the vulnerabilities and security concerns that exist with respect to the voting processes and systems that are currently in place in the United States via our website and social media.

Should we receive grant funding in the days ahead, the funds will be appropriated to the development of our dApp platform / mobile voting dApp, which will be open source and available for use by the public.

~Are you aware of your competitors in the voting arena?

We are aware of the current players in the mobile voting space, such as Voatz and Democracy Live. We know of the voting solutions they’ve demonstrated AND we know that they are gaining traction. We have our unbiased opinions (both good and bad), which we will share with the public, in time, via our website and social media channels. But, regardless of what we may think about our competitors and the mobile voting solutions they’ve released to date, we applaud the belief in the ideal of people like West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswald and Utah County Clerk, Amelia Powers Gardner (among others) whom have demonstrated their willingness to trust in modern technology as a means to increase access to polls.

Despite what you may have read in the news lately about those competing in the mobile voting space, at Follow My Vote, our singular motivation is to solve this technical problem for the citizens of the planet, not to make a profit. Everyone should know that Follow My Vote is a non-partisan public benefit corporation, which on one hand means that we have no hidden agendas of any kind AND on the other hand it means that, if we succeed, a portion of our profits will go towards making a positive impact on society far beyond what our software solutions will provide.

As we work to bring our software solutions to life, it’s important to reiterate that we are taking the open-source approach to software development, which means that we plan to share our source code with the world, once it’s completed. This opens up the opportunity for our software to be reviewed and scrutinized by researchers all over the world before our secure end-to-end verifiable mobile voting software is ever used in an election. We may stumble and we may fall along the way, but we plan to pick ourselves up and try again until we get it right.

To be clear, we fully intend to open ourselves up to security reviews and 3rd party assessments from renowned security experts, such as Trail of Bits, at every step of the way and will share these outcomes with the public, as they happen, on our road to our first pilot.

~What challenges do you anticipate on your road to success?

Upon receiving grant funding, and as we work toward developing our decentralized application (dApp) platform and mobile voting dApp, we anticipate having to tackle a whole host of technical challenges, many of which will be heavily focused on security. But, we wanted to take this opportunity to point out that any company taking on the challenge of developing a secure end-to-end verifiable mobile voting platform will eventually have to address the following issues:

• Verifying Identities – Mobile devices aren’t always secure. As we are seeing now, with digital signature matching, digital identity verification can be problematic. One should also keep in mind that there is a myriad of ways digital identity verification can be accomplished, each of which come with their own security challenges/risks. Regardless of the digital identity verification approach that is taken, companies will need to get this first step in the voting process right if they are going to even get the opportunity to work on other parts.

• Getting Ballots to Voters – Digital issuing of ballots will not be easy. Making sure the proper ballot is delivered securely and untampered with to the voter is absolutely critical.

• Maintaining Anonymity – Secret ballots are essential for democracy. Being able to remove identifying connections from digital ballots is an essential step. That being said, WV Secretary of State Mac Warner, was recently attributed in saying it might be necessary to eliminate ballot secrecy for internet voting, in order to ensure that votes are safely transmitted. At Follow My Vote, we wholeheartedly disagree, as we’ve already designed a voting process that will allow for anonymous voting within our mobile voting system. Therefore, it is our position that this perceived voter anonymity issue stems from a lack of creativity in voting system design to date, which is why no other company has accomplished this feat yet, at least to our knowledge.

• Secure Data Storage – When designing secure and verifiable mobile voting software, the incorporation of blockchain technology (or distributed ledger technology) is a must, at least in our opinion. Blockchain technology alone is not a silver bullet in terms of developing a secure mobile voting platform, as the approach comes with it’s own set of challenges. However, by incorporating distributed ledger technology into your mobile voting system you can be assured that votes stored in the ballot box will be stored securely in an irreversible way, meaning the decentralized database that is the blockchain is incapable of being hacked by a would be attacker. This is also one of our areas of expertise at Follow My Vote, so we don’t anticipate too much of an uphill battle there.

• End-to-End Encryption – Facilitating secure communications should be a fundamental requirement within any mobile voting system’s design. If we want to be taken seriously, we’ll need to ensure that we get this done right. Otherwise, our system will not be trusted.

• Fully Auditable Systems – At the end of the day, citizens around the world need to be able to have trust in their own election results. Therefore, we believe that the only way a secure end-to-end verifiable mobile voting system can truly be trusted is if the software is open-source, meaning that the source code is fully auditable. This is perhaps the hardest part for your typical voting system vendor to deal with. However, it’s the easiest point for Follow My Vote to deal with, as we have pledged to be open-sourced and fully auditable from the very beginning AND we remain committed to that end.

~Where do you see opportunities to pilot your secure mobile voting software, once it’s been completed?

Right now, in the United States, many states are currently trying to scale vote-by-mail programs to keep people safe while they vote, which means that many voters will, for the first time, not vote on Election Day 2020 at a centralized polling place. We know vote-by-mail is not perfect AND many of the risk points mirror the risk points of mobile voting, such as getting ballots to voters, ensuring voter identity while protecting anonymity, protecting the ballots, and producing accurate, auditable results. But that’s where we think the majority of opportunities for a pilot will come from, meaning anywhere we see vote-by-mail taking place today, we are expecting to see secure mobile voting eventually being an option. You could say the same about anywhere where absentee voting is currently taking place, and in particular for Military Overseas Voters.

It goes without saying that, at Follow My Vote, we hope to learn a great deal during this election, and move closer to the goal of safe, secure end-to-end verifiable mobile voting.

~Any parting words?

We know we have a long and winding road ahead of us. But, as we stated in the very beginning of this article, we wanted the world to know that we’re still here and we’re not going anywhere.

We also wanted the world to know that we are open to partnerships and collaboration opportunities where it makes sense. So, whether you are a voting related organization, a potential user of our mobile voting software, or a single individual with dreams of making a difference, if you are interested in working with us in any capacity, please don’t hesitate to Contact Us using the form below.

In closing, even if we have to tackle this problem on our own, Follow My Vote is up for this challenge AND we invite you to take this journey with us! So, be sure to signup for our newsletter and follow us on social media!!

The post The State of Follow My Vote -> 2020 Report appeared first on Follow My Vote.

These dApps (or decentralized applications) are similar to standard apps except that they run on a decentralized network of computers, not one centralized location. They will operate in a similar fashion to normal apps in terms of the user-interface (UI), but will essentially be based on a smart contract. They are seen as the future of blockchain by many and allow people to both use and participate in the services offered by these dApps.

While there are numerous places that these dApps can be hosted, many dApps found their home on the Ethereum blockchain. It has been around for years. Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency according to its total market cap, and the third most expensive coin in terms of USD (i.e. $260 per Ether). It is a safe bet as it hosts thousands of different dApps. However, recently, a new contender has risen to the occasion and is giving Ethereum a run for its money. That contender is EOS. But why? What makes EOS and its blockchain attract so many projects and people away from Ethereum?

With that in mind, this article is going to take a look at a few reasons why more dApps are beginning to move over to the EOS ecosystem. However, before looking at why dApps are making the switch, let’s learn a little about EOS itself and how it came to be.

What is EOS?

EOS is a powerful infrastructure for decentralized applications. They make it simple to design dApps that are both vertically and horizontally scalable, as well as ensuring usability and flexibility. All different types of apps can be created – from ones to share music to ones to track your fitness and everything in between.

EOS is a new kid on the crypto block, as its ICO began in June 2017. In total, their ICO was able to raise over $4 billion, despite them not even having a live product, which was unheard of. According to the amount raised, this was the largest ICO in history. Several big players and notable names were investors during its ICO.

Despite being so new, EOS is already making waves in the crypto world. In addition to having the largest ICO ever, EOS is also the 6^th largest cryptocurrency on the planet according to its total market cap. So now that you know a little about EOS, let’s finally take a look at why so many dApps are moving over to the EOS blockchain.

Reasons for dApps Moving to the EOS Ecosystem

It Runs Smoothly

First of all, EOS is said to run much more smoothly than other blockchains like Ethereum and NEO. When many transactions are being processed on the Ethereum blockchain, it tends to take a decent amount of time and be a little choppy. This type of thing is not an issue with EOS.

Scalability is one of the huge selling points of EOS. It is now able to process over 3000 transactions per second and is believed to scale to million TPS. Whether your app only has a couple of users, or millions, EOS will ensure it runs smoothly and won’t experience any hiccups or crashes. The platform is also capable of handling thousands of different dApps at the same time. Certainly this scalability for large and small projects alike is one reason why more dApps are moving to EOS.

No Transaction Fees for Users

Another gripe many users and developers of dApps have with the likes of Ethereum is the fact that there is a fee for nearly every kind of transaction. While these transaction fees are usually quite small and manageable, they can definitely add up over time. On the other hand, EOS charges no transaction fees, which is obviously a huge plus for users.

This means tokens can be sent free of charge and there is no cost at all to call a smart contract. Of course, developers still have to pay some operating costs. In general, EOS is much more efficient than other options as it uses a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm that doesn’t require traditional mining.

Increased Transaction Speeds

In addition to the platform and dApps running smoothly, and transactions being free, EOS also boasts faster transactions than most other blockchains. As mentioned before, EOS can process thousands and thousands of transactions per second, while many other blockchain systems are only capable of hundreds per second.

By having faster transactions, you ensure that users will have a better experience on your dApp as they won’t have to wait for their transactions to go through. While other blockchain systems could make strides to improve their speed, they have a lot of catching up to do.

So essentially, it is the scalability, speed and low fees that is drawing many creators, developers and publishers to EOS. It remains to be seen just how many dApps will ultimately be hosted on EOS, but plenty have already moved or have said they are planning to do so. While it may be awhile before EOS completely takes over Ethereum for the largest host of dApps, it will be exciting to see what happens as both jockey for the position.

In conclusion, hopefully this article has been able to shed some light on why more dApps are moving to the EOS ecosystem.

About The Author:

Mary Ann Callahan – Follow My Vote Blog Contributor

“As an expert on Bitcoin-related topics, I’ve found myself as a Journalist at Cex.io – cryptocurrency exchange. I’m working on articles related to blockchain security, bitcoin purchase guides or bitcoin regulations in different countries.” – Mary Ann Callahan

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