Russian
telecommunication giant Rostelekom, together with the Russian Ministry
of Digital Development and Communications, tested a blockchain-based
voting system developed in collaboration with Waves Enterprise.

As local news outlets reported, the preliminary test
involved 30,000 people who were trying out the platform’s functionality
and technical capabilities. According to Rostelekom spokespeople, the
system worked as intended during the test and did not fail under high
load. 

Votes were reportedly counted in less than one minute
through homomorphic encryption systems. This method allows calculations
to result in the same output even if the underlying data remains
encrypted.

Officials noted that the test helped them to identify
some usability issues. They have since pledged that the feedback will be
used to make the platform more accessible and intuitive.

The
platform will be used for a partial parliamentary election in the Kursk
and Yaroslavl regions on from Sep. 11 through 13. An additional mock
election will be conducted on Aug. 31 as a final check of the system
before its live deployment.

This is a continuation of Russia’s
blockchain voting experiments, first conducted in 2019 for the Moscow
local elections and then in June 2020 for the controversial
constitutional amendment referendum.

The platform used for the upcoming election was developed in collaboration with Waves Enterprise and it is a completely independent product from previous iterations.

As Cointelegraph previously reported, the Bitfury-developed platform used in the June election suffered from major performance issues, security bugs, allegations of fraud, and an alleged lack of transparency.

While Waves assured Cointelegraph in earlier interviews that their system does not contain backdoors, critics of the previous system
argued that if it cannot be validated by external observers, blockchain
offers precious few improvements over a centralized e-voting system.

source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/russia-set-to-try-again-with-blockchain-voting-despite-earlier-setbacks