Two Russian regions, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, have approved usage of systems for e-voting on the basis of blockchain.
Blockchain voting in Russia.
This March the lawmakers have agreed on the amendments to the constitution that would enable president Vladimir Putin to extend the appointment of presidency for two terms of 6 years but this should be accepted by citizens via the approval voting that is to take place on 1st July. The two major regions decided to use blockchain systems, and their testings started on 12th July, while the voting initially scheduled on 22th July was delayed to 1st July.
Previously the blockchain system was already used in 2019 but just a month before the French researcher had found critical vulnerability in the platform, and this caused common doubts on whether such systems were reliable. According to experts, the platform could be hacked by the scammers in just 20 minutes with the help of publicly available software used on standards computers.
This is probably why the Central Election Commission is to carefully consider the technology implementation in each concrete case. Some cities like Saint Petersburg, Karelia and Krasnoyarsk have failed the inspection and won’t be able to use the system in the upcoming voting.
