Utah Republicans Could Challenge Online Voting Record -- Wall Street Journal

[bsteadman]

Utah Republicans Could Challenge Online Voting Record

Wall Street Journal
By Byron Tau
3/21/2016

Excerpt:

Nearly 59,000 Utah Republicans have registered to participate in online voting in Tuesday’s GOP presidential caucus, according to the state Republican party.

If more than 80% of those registered to vote online actually cast ballots in Tuesday’s caucuses, the Utah online vote would rank as the largest online vote in a U.S. presidential nominating contest ever.

Utah is conducting one of the largest experiments with online voting in more than a decade, allowing Republicans to cast ballots online in the state’s presidential caucus.

The largest online vote by a state party in a presidential election to date was in Michigan in 2004, when more than 46,000 Democrats cast votes online in that year’s presidential primary. Arizona Democrats also held an online vote in 2000, where about 40,000 people cast ballots in a presidential primary race there.

Neither state party conducted an online vote after those two election years. A spokesperson for the Arizona Democratic Party described the 2000 vote as an experiment, while Michigan switched from a party-run caucus in 2004 to a state-run primary election in 2008. While state political parties can decide to set up online voting in party-run elections like caucus, most state and local election law does not provide for it.
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View the complete article, including image, at:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/0...voting-record/

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Utah Kick-Starts Online Voting on Blockchain Trend -- newsbtc.com

Utah Kick-Starts Online Voting on Blockchain Trend

newsbtc.com
By Gautham
3/21/2016

Excerpt:

The Republican Party of Utah State is going online with blockchain based online voting system for choosing the candidate for the Presidential elections. Read more...
Women Voting CC Roosevelt

There have been talks about the use of blockchain technology in online voting for a long time. Until now, it was either theoretical or experimental. But now, it is going to be a reality soon. Sooner than expected to be precise. The first ever online blockchain based voting in the United States is happening today.

The State of Utah will be the first state to use the blockchain technology to nominate a Republican candidate for the United States presidential elections. The Republican voters in Utah do not have to visit the polling booth to vote for the Presidential candidate. They can just sit in front of their PC at home or from wherever they are to vote online. This voting option is open for both kinds of voters – The ones who are in the state and those who are currently outside the State of Utah, whether within the United States or outside, doesn’t matter.

The voting process put in place by Smartmatic is simple. In order to do so, they just have to visit the Utah State Republican party website and register themselves. Once their party membership is confirmed, a unique cryptographic key will be sent to them. The cryptographic key is the ballot. During the voting process, the voter will have to enter the received unique cryptographic key while polling online.

The voting page will contain information about the candidates and also an option to cast the vote. For those who are not so familiar with the Republican candidates contesting in the elections, they can look them up on the same page. They can also change their vote any number of times before hitting the submit button. Once the vote is submitted, it is irrevocable.
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View the complete article, including image, at:

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/03/21/ut...ckchain-trend/