Followmyvote

Follow My Vote is a startup using distributed ledgers to run voting processes and prevent identity theft. One of the significant advantages of voters using blockchains like the one underlying Follow My Vote is that users can verify voting choices at any point in time.

What

With the ability to audit the ballot box and watch elections progress in real time, Follow My Vote's platform offers unparalleled electoral transparency.

Let’s face it. No one except for election officials really know what happens to your vote once you cast it, so it’s not surprising that more and more research is showing that citizens don’t vote because they don’t believe their votes count. Understandably, these frustrated voters are losing confidence in our democratic system.

Enter Follow My Vote’s online voting platform. Using a webcam and a government-issued ID, voters can remotely and securely log in and vote for their desired candidates. After they’ve selected their candidates, they can use their unique Voter ID to quite literally open the ballot box, locate their vote, and check that it is both present and correct. Additionally, voters can then watch the election progress in real time as votes are cast. What’s more, Follow My Vote’s platform allows for an indecisive voter to return to the system and switch his or her votes at any time before the election deadline closes.

The ability to change your vote, coupled with the ability to observe the election in real time, has major implications for the current two-party system. Now, voters who would like to vote for a third party candidate are likely not to for fear of wasting their vote on a candidate who is not likely to win. In some instances, voting for a third party draws votes from one of the two dominant parties that has similar views and increases the chances the opposition party will win. With the ability to change their vote, voters can counteract this vote-splitting effect and shake up the current two-party system.

Follow My Vote’s platform offers convenience which will likely improve voter turnout among younger generations and provide troops abroad, the elderly, and the disabled a viable alternative to current voting methods. Democracy can’t function if almost half of citizens aren’t voting; and in this regard Follow My Vote is striving to restore the democratic tradition.

Another advantage Follow My Vote’s system offers is cost-effectiveness. In the United States, millions of dollars of taxpayer money are spent on line items such as printing ballots and mailing voter information alone. These are unnecessary costs that will be reduced over time by moving voting online, as Follow My Vote plans to do.

Follow My Vote's software comes with the security of blockchain technology and is open-source so that anyone can audit the software’s code. Keep reading to learn more about blockchain technology and why we believe that decentralization is the key to secure online voting.