FB pixel

Utah County third jurisdiction to pilot Voatz’ biometric elections app

Utah County third jurisdiction to pilot Voatz’ biometric elections app
 

Voatz has signed up Utah County for its biometric-backed mobile voting service to allow religious missionaries and active-duty military personnel to cast ballots remotely with their mobile phones, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Utah County Clerk Amelia Powers estimates that 58 voters will use the service during primary elections for municipal offices under the pilot project.

Verified Voting, a group that advocates for more secure elections, is concerned that Voatz has not proved its technology can identify a threat, which makes it difficult to be sure that voter information was not intercepted before being written to the blockchain.

“We always advocate that there be a way to detect if something has gone wrong and then to recover from it,” comments Verified Voting President Marian Schneider. “This doesn’t have that — regardless of all the measures they’re putting in place to prevent something from happening.”

So far, Voatz has conducted 40 successful pilots for local, state, and federal elections, including City of Denver municipal elections in May, as well as the June runoff, and more than 15,000 votes were cast in the largest one, the company says. Utah County will become the third jurisdiction to use the app, through a partnership with Tusk Philanthropies and the National Cybersecurity Center.

Utah County was called the “epicenter of dysfunction” by the State’s Governor Gary Herbert after a broken voting machines led to long lineups and delayed results in last year’s federal election. The county is also piloting ranked-choice voting in the upcoming election.

Voatz Director of Product Hilary Braseth says the company is currently focussed on providing services for overseas voters, but hopes in the future to extend its product to people who may struggle to get to polling locations due to disabilities.

Voatz also raised $7 million in a recent Series A funding round to increase the accessibility and footprint of its app.

Article Topics

 |   |   |   |   |   | 

Latest Biometrics News

 

Asda supermarket chain faces legal complaint over facial recognition

Asda is facing a legal complaint over its use of live facial recognition (LFR) cameras in its supermarkets. The legal…

 

Thales Data Threat Report warns that mad scramble to embrace AI comes with risk

In an online talk about AI, Eric Hanselman, chief analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research, offers a tour…

 

‘Digital identity is critical national infrastructure’: ID4Africa 2025

World Bank and European Commission Technical Consultant Adam Coooper examined the global landscape of digital identity adoption, noting that he…

 

Record ID4Africa exhibitors show growth in continent’s digital identity market

Among the new all-time highs in scale set at ID4Africa’s 2025 AGM in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is the number of…

 

Suriname launches OSD-produced biometric passport

Suriname has officially launched its new biometric passport for all Surinamese citizens. The Austrian State Printing House (OSD) was selected…

 

Ethiopia unveils FaydaPass digital wallet to boost financial inclusion

Ethiopia has launched what it calls the FaydaPass wallet, the latest move in its digital public infrastructure (DPI) program aimed…

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Biometric Market Analysis

Most Viewed This Week

Featured Company

Biometrics Insight, Opinion

Digital ID In-Depth

Biometrics White Papers

Biometrics Events