The Russian blockchain voting system has centralized characteristics

Rostelecom has introduced a blockchain voting system designed for the upcoming elections in September. The announcement was a welcome step as more and more democracies adopt such transparent systems to avoid dirty voting

Blockchain-based voting system in Russia

Waves blockchain and Rostelecom created the system together. According to Rostelecom’s statement, this gives unified control to various election participants. However, all blockchain nodes will be hosted on its servers to prevent a security breach. Independent observers are not allowed to manage any nodes themselves for the same reason.

Alexandra Ivanova from Waves said that every element of the election is transparent and available for public and Supervisory control. The public will have full access to view information about the network. She further stressed that interference with crypto-tools is impossible. Despite the shortcomings of previous similar voting systems based on blockchains, she is confident in the latest version.

Previously, the blockchain-based electoral mechanisms used in Russia to amend the Constitution were in doubt. The entire operation was controversial due to security issues. Russian voter IDs were available on dark web portals.