The i2CAT Foundation participated in the first pilot test of Vicdoni to validate the use of the electronic vote

The initiative to vote electronically was selected by the Government of Catalonia as a case study of the Blockchain Strategy of Catalonia

The action was developed by the Vocdoni project, a technology designed and developed by a group of Catalan entrepreneurs specialized in the promotion of sovereign and censorship-resistant governance technologies. The initiative to vote electronically was selected by the Government of Catalonia as a case study of the Blockchain Strategy of Catalonia. The Strategy aims to transform the territory into an avant-garde regarding the use and development of Blockchain technology, promoting use and investigation in decentralized theories through public administration, companies, universities, society, and new industry.

Around 1.000 people showed interest in participating in this pilot voting test, where i2CAT, the Blockchain Centre of Catalonia, the Distributed System investigation group of the UPC, and the Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain Technologies investigation group of the UdG.

In the pilot test, people who had the idCAT certificate accessed the web 14fruites and participated during all the election day. The results of the survey were public almost immediately after the closing of polling stations. The promoters of the test clarified that it was not a replacement for the real votes. This was the first digital vote experiment in Spain, and it was developed aiming to demonstrate the possibilities that digital tools offer in political participation.

On the level of infrastructure, each institution provided nodes, configuring a distributed system and generation a resilient infrastructure. The votes were encrypted, and socially, it is expected that in the digital vote, the infrastructure and its operation stop being controlled for just one organization.

About Vocdoni

Vocdoni is an entrepreneurial initiative that aims to develop digital and universal participation that is also verifiable, anonymous, and resilient to censorship due to decentralized technologies, achieving the anonymity of the participant due to cryptographic mechanisms. The project allowed the development of a safe participation system. One of the main traits of the technological design of Vocdoni is that keeps the anonymity of the participant but allowing a transparent recount through a public blockchain.