Non-paper-ballot voting has been going on for decades. The blockchain is perhaps the most secure design ever seen. Pete Martin, founder and CEO of Votem, a veteran of SAP consulting, along with his team set about figuring out a way forward to enable mobile and other types of digital voting, and came up with an open call for submissions of a mobile voting platform with a reward of $230,000. There was no requirement that the solution had to be blockchain-based, but the primary criteria of the submission was that it “couldn’t be hacked.”
Mobile voting could allow for identity verification on a whole new level. Martin points out that most US states prohibit invasive identification techniques.
Before the last election, Votem purchased the intellectual property of Konnech Inc., a company which had existing contracts with more than one jurisdiction. Their blockchain-based platform was utilized in the “fan vote” portion of the 2017 induction of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members. Nearly 2 million votes were cast using the blockchain – the largest such use of blockchain in voting to date. Over 60% of its votes were cast via mobile phones.
Source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/votem-blockchain-democracy-voting/
I think that having an open submission for a blockchain type voting system is an interesting way to get a new voting system. Using blockchain technology in voting is a good application because blockchain cannot really be hacked, due to the decentralized general ledger of data. There are always concerns with voting on whether or not the data is untarnished from hacking, and blockchain promises uncompromised data integrity. It will be interesting to see if blockchain will be used for voting in the future.