Blockchain to optimise voting in Uruguay

Uruguay has been appearing on the radar recently for many cryptocurrency entrepreneurs in the region.

The country is politically and economically stable, favours direct foreign investment, and gives generous tax breaks to tech companies who set up their offices there.

Now it seems the country can also boast the first political party – the Uruguay Digital Party – to use blockchain technology to optimise the voting process.

The Uruguay Digital Party will use Aeternity blockchain technology

The first political party to use blockchain has opted for Aeternity’s technology. Aeternity now has a strong presence in this South American country. The company has already formed an alliance with the ORT University of Uruguay to create an incubator for anyone who wants to develop a dApp on the Aeternity blockchain.

Voting is actually compulsory in Uruguay and has an average turnout of over 90%. The Uruguay Digital Party will therefore collaborate with the open-source blockchain and developer platform in order to optimise the participation processes of citizens in internal voting.

Their aim is to make decision-making within the party more transparent and create a system in which citizens, especially members of the Digital Party, can take part in a decentralised way and have a say in the political decisions of their community.

How the blockchain voting system will work

According to a press release issued by Aeternity, the team will work in two main areas and over two project phases. To begin with, phase one will centre on developing a decentralised application (dApp) based on the “liquid democracy” model. This will operate with a basic set of smart contracts as well as tokens that will be issued by the Uruguay Digital Party to use for its internal governance.

According to Aeternity, “a technological solution will also be developed for the collection and validation of adherent identities. This will allow the Digital Party to create a secure and transparent database.”

This will essentially mean that each citizen can vote on proposals and contribute their ideas and suggestions in a safe and direct manner. Their vote will be kept private thanks to encryption techniques that will ensure its secrecy.

“The application of democratic governance that will be implemented by the Digital Party is based on the internal governance solution that Aeternity uses for internal community decision-making, which is a completely new architecture, allowing greater participation of citizens in political decisions at all levels, with unalterable reliability,” said Pablo Coirolo, CEO of Aeternity Americas.

“This is an important milestone on the road to the massive use of blockchain technology to benefit democratic institutions.”

One Uruguay Digital Party candidate commented to Representative Legislative Body Justin Graside:

“We want to put technology at the service of Uruguayans to add participation and transparency to decision-making. We believe that the benefits granted by blockchain in terms of security and decentralisation of processes allow us to offer Uruguayans a solution according to our expectations.”

About the Uruguay Digital Party

Founded in 2013, the Digital Party’s representatives affirm that it is the first political party that is focused on bringing Uruguay into the digital age, and particularly when it comes to politics. The party is defined as being made up of representatives who believe that Uruguayans should be able to take advantage of technology and expand their influence as citizens.

The next election in Uruguay will take place later this month and the Digital Party is campaigning. It will also take part in the departmental elections that the country will hold in 2020.

For its part, Aeternity claims to offer the best open-source blockchain technology available for dApps since, unlike other blockchains, it is highly scalable, making massive usage an option.