Australian startup works to develop voting system that gets results in minutes

Rage Commentary : Australia's political situation is in turmoil, and the election results are also surprising. In 2014, Australia also had an embarrassing situation of lost ballots. This unbearable situation finally gave birth to new technology development projects. Local startup VeriVote began to explore and develop a new voting system, using blockchain as the core technology, hoping to improve the transparency and security of voting. Many countries have carried out blockchain exploration in this field, but I don't know what form this system will take in Australia?

Translation: Annie_Xu

With Australia's election deadlocked a week ago, local startups are working on a new voting system that could announce results within minutes of polls closing.

VeriVote CEO Adrian Petersen and four friends began exploring blockchain technology after hearing about the news that 1,000 ballots were lost in the 2014 state election. "Traditional ballot box voting brings many problems to the government and voters." "Voters can easily be misled, can vote multiple times, and counting votes also consumes a lot of government resources." "We are very excited to discuss ways to improve national democracy together because it can simply and effectively represent the public's opinions on government affairs."

Voting in the 21st Century

Adrian Petersen

Petersen said his team hopes to use technology and blockchain to replace the more than 150-year-old traditional voting system with a more transparent and accurate voting process. "VeriVote is designed to give voters the choice of voting at home or at a polling station." The system uses advanced encryption technology to protect voters' identity information and can permanently store ballots while ensuring anonymity. "Our goal is to work with the election commission to ensure the most fair voting process, whether voting at a polling station or at home." "Blockchain is the core technology that supports VeriVote to permanently store ballots in a public forum."

The team says the technology is not limited to Australian voting. "It will impact markets worth billions around the world." "Australia's 2013 election alone cost $192 million."

Seed round financing

Petersen said VeriVote will use a software as a service (SaaS) model and then sell it to businesses. "We want to work with large organizations and governments to develop the most fair voting mechanism and provide our platform to small non-governmental organizations." VeriVote has just joined the Vocus Upstart accelerator program and received $40,000 in seed funding and technical guidance. "Our top priority now is to develop a platform that people can trust before key decision makers in universities and local councils do." "Our platform will mainly affect developing countries where citizens do not trust their governments to conduct fair elections."

Rob Nathan, managing director of Vocus Upstart, said he was impressed by the core team of VeriVote, which had won several local hackathons. "We chose VeriVote because of the strength and diversity of the team." "They are young, smart and talented." "The biggest benefit they get from the accelerator program is the guidance and advice of more than 30 mentors with rich entrepreneurial experience."