City of Zug tests blockchain consultative vote

For the test vote, Zug residents with a digital ID will answer two yes-no questions and one question with several possible answers. In contrast to a regular referendum, the responses will not be legally binding but will instead be used to examine security aspects of the system including personality protection, voting secrecy and resistance to tampering. 

The vote, which will remain open until 1 July, was opened on Monday when Mayor Dolfi Müller cast his vote. “Data sovereignty and transparency are the highest priorities for voters in a decentralized e-voting system because there is individual traceability,” said Müller.

The blockchain-based voting system was developed by the Zug-based IT firm Luxoft in collaboration with the School of Information Technology at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. It will release the platform’s source code to help disseminate blockchain-based voting solutions around the world. 

E-voting is a “fundamental mechanism for direct democracy”, which is why the technology should not be owned by a single company, said Vasily Suvorov, Chief Technology Officer at Luxoft. “We will make the e-voting platform open source so people can understand what makes up the technology and how it works.”