Press Releases
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Votem’s Judson Neer to chair new Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council Working Group
The EISCC’s new Cybersecurity Working Group sub-committee will increase cybersecurity awareness and education Votem’s Chief Architect Judson Neer has been named chair of the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (EISCC)’s new Cybersecurity Working Group. The working group was formed to increase cybersecurity awareness and education throughout the election subsector and provide input and best practices […]
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Cleveland, OH - October 1, 2018 Votem is pleased to announce the acquisition of Everyone Counts with offices across the United States, Australia/New Zealand, and Canada. “Both Votem and Everyone Counts were founded with a similar mission to make voting more accessible, secure and transparent with the shared objective to instill confidence in voters […]
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Votem Corp Selected For LA VSAP Project In Partnership With Smartmatic
United States, Los Angeles An innovative voter-centered election system will modernize the way Los Angeles County citizens will cast their ballots. In partnership with Smartmatic, who was awarded a contract to assist LA County in the design, construction, and deployment of the new voting solution, Votem will facilitate the development of the new system’s interactive […]
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Votem Launches Proof of Vote® - A Blockchain End-to-End Voter Verified Digital Voting System Protocol Ensuring the verifiability, security, and transparency of an election. Votem is releasing its Proof of Vote® protocol, a blueprint for end-to-end voter verified (E2EVV) digital voting systems that uses blockchain to ensure the verifiability, security, and transparency of an election, to […]
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Votem to be a Founding Member in Dept. of Homeland Security Council on Elections
Votem to be a Founding Member in Dept. of Homeland Security Council on Elections CLEVELAND, OHIO USA Votem is proud to announce its participation in the Department of Homeland Security's Sector Coordinating Council (SCC) for the Election Infrastructure Subsector. The Council, which is a cooperative effort between the DHS, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), The National […]
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Votem announces its partnership with Civic to bring the first-ever decentralized KYC process to the VAST Token Public Presale CLEVELAND, OHIO USA Votem, the blockchain-based mobile voting platform, has announced a partnership with Civic to launch the first-ever decentralized KYC process ever. Civic is a blockchain identity-verification technology that allows consumers to authorize the use […]
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Votem® Welcomes Dr. Emin Gün Sirer to Board of Advisors
CELVELAND, NOVEMBER 28, 2017 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Votem Corp has announced the addition of Dr. Emin Gün Sirer to their Technical Board of Advisors. Dr. Sirer is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University and Co-Director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrency and Smart Contracts (IC3) who brings years of experience in Blockchain systems […]
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Votem Corporation Certified to Participate in EAC’s Voting System & Testing Certification Program
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Silver Spring, Md. - The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) today announced that Votem Corporation has been officially registered to participate in the commission's Voting System Testing & Certification Program. The designation follows an EAC determination that the Cleveland, Ohio-based company meets all of the requirements noted in its certification Program Manual. Votem […]
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Votem welcomes Alex Tapscott to the Technical Board of Advisors
Alex is a seasoned financial executive, entrepreneur, investor and thought leader. He is the CEO of Northwest Passage Ventures, an advisory firm and consultancy. Alex is a founding member of the International Monetary Fund’s special advisory group on fintech and the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Blockchain. He also sits on the advisory board of Elections Canada, the independent non-partisan agency responsible for conducting federal elections and referendums in Canada.
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Votem proudly announces that Bob Stewart joins the team as Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Bob Stewart is joining Votem as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and a member of its senior leadership team effective immediately. Bob most recently served as the Chief Operating Officer and elected member of the Board of Directors of Sonavation, Inc. Bob was instrumental in turning the company’s products around, focusing efforts on the delivery of the company’s IDkey consumer and enterprise devices containing, industrial and mobile fingertip biometric identification and access control products, solutions and services.
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1,880,525 Votes Cast – Largest Ever Online Vote Using Blockchain
Votem® and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announce the successful completion of the ‘Fan Vote’ for the 2017 Inductees. Votem’s cutting-edge “Blockchain” platform powered the successful fan vote enabling the Rock Hall to easily collect votes from around the world without the risk of ‘software bots’ falsely adding to the vote counts.
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Votem Announces Acquisition of Mobile Voting Business
Votem announced the acquisition of the mobile voting business from Michigan-based, Konnech Inc. This business unit and related product line called “ABVote”, brings Votem a set of leading voting systems products in use by many progressive jurisdictions including the State of Montana and Washington, DC.
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Votem Announces the Launch of the $230,000 Mobile Voting Challenge
Votem announced the launch of the $230,000 Mobile Voting Challenge on the InnoCentive global open innovation platform which aims to give democracy back to the people by allowing them to conveniently, safely and securely participate in the electoral process.
Press Coverage
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AppInventiv
Can Blockchain Change How We Vote?
Unsurprisingly in a little under 5 years, the credibility of American elections is being questioned again, and this time, the doubts are coming in from the POTUS himself. And somewhere we agree with him. Voting as we know it cannot be fully trusted.
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Wall Street Journal
Voting By Phone: The Promise and Peril of Digital Ballots
Limited experiments in mobile voting have taken place in elections across the U.S. Whether they prove secure enough for wider adoption is an open question.
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ICAEW
Blockchain: count every vote? Yes you can
9 November 2020: In light of the ongoing US election controversy, fintech academic and chartered accountant Gavin Brown predicts the implementation of new blockchain-style voting methods, giving us incontestable results in hours rather than days or weeks.
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Crain's Cleveland Business
Election muddle and a business boost are buoying Bernie Moreno
"I think people saw what happened with the (recent presidential ) election and said, 'Wow, there should be a better way to do this,' " he said. "I've gotten more messages about voting in the last two weeks than I had in the last two years."
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Blockchain Philanthropy Foundation
Blockchain Applications: Election Voting
“Blockchain’s fundamental characteristics — immutability, accountability and security — drive the technology’s potential for securely maintaining voter registration records and recording votes.”
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Innovation in Advocacy
The Future of Mobile Voting is Here: Meet Votem
With election fraud becoming an increasingly present issue, Votem is making tremendous strides by way of a blockchain mobile voting solution.
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e.republic | Government Technology
Votem Awarded 2019 GovTech 100 Company
Votem Awarded 2019 GovTech 100 Company - The GovTech 100 is an annual list compiled and published by Government Technology as a compendium of 100 companies focused on, making a difference in, and selling to state and local government agencies across the United States.
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Grow Wire
The Future of Election Voting is Mobile, and It’s Already Here
In short: Mobile voting is almost certainly the future of government elections: In this week’s general election, absentee voters from 25 states cast ballots online. Votem is one of a handful of mobile voting companies that allow voters to register and vote from laptops or phones. The company also has a blockchain voting product. Blockchain voting has the potential to create more security, convenience and collaboration between opposing political groups.
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WKYC
Why can’t we just vote from our phones?
A new NBC poll found about only a third of millennials say they will vote on Tuesday, suggesting their turnout may not be strong. Yet a local company may have a solution that could help in future elections, and it lies in a voting app. Pete Martin is CEO for Votem, a Cleveland-based mobile voting company that could let you one day cast your ballot from anywhere. “The census bureau in the 2014 and 2016 election, they’ve done these extensive surveys on why people didn’t vote. No surprise, the number one reason was ‘I couldn’t make it to the polling place,’” he said.
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Chamber of Digital Commerce
The Future of Voting is Blockchain
Pete Martin, Votem Founder and CEO, sees the public’s leeriness of electronic voting and recent voting scandals as “both an opportunity and an issue.” “It just requires more education on our part. People are fearful, and I get it. But we're not going to shirk our responsibilities to make sure we can engender the trust with elections officials and people buying the system," said Martin. The implications for developing countries which do not yet have the voting infrastructure that the United States has are even more dramatic and could prove a powerful instrument for the continuing spread of representative democracy. Voting should be as easy as hopping online from home to pay bills from your checking account. In today’s digital age, we can do better.
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The New York Times
Interesting article on the security behind blockchain voting.
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BlockTeq
How Votem Makes Elections More Accessible, Trustworthy, and Transparent by Using a Blockchain
In this episode of Blockteq Talk, Jeff Stern of Votem explains the work that Votem does and how they help make elections more accessible, trustworthy and secure by using a blockchain. Jeff also details the problems that exist within the existing voting system, why Votem is well suited to solve these problems, the difficulties Votem faces, how Votem stands out from other mobile voting platforms, Votem’s open source “Proof of Vote” blockchain system, and much more.
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Digital Politics
Moving To Secure Online Voting: Pete Martin of Votem
Pete Martin, Founder and CEO, Votem Corp. is focused on making it easier for people to register and vote particularly on their mobile devices taking advantage of a secure mobile blockchain voting platform. With the acquisition of Everyone Counts, Votem is expanding the universe of those who are being offered the opportunity to vote online. With a just announced online voter guide and online ballot being developed for Los Angeles County voters, the move to bringing the election process into the 21st Century is starting to gain momentum.
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Independent Sector
Innovate for Good Challenge – Independent Sector and Accenture
This year, Independent Sector and Accenture partnered to launch a new initiative to uncover some of the most novel examples of organizations leveraging new I.T. to drive social change. The Innovate for Good Challenge recognizes organizations catalyzing social change through their use of new I.T. such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and/or extended reality. We were overwhelmed by exceptional application entries and nominations from extraordinary organizations advancing social impact in this inaugural year of the challenge
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Cleveland Magazine
“We’re building a company for the future, not the past,” says Martin. “We were convinced blockchain is clearly the future.” Votem has run internal elections for unions, the Ohio State Bar Association and public elections for military service members overseas. After bots polluted the 2015 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame fan vote with bogus submissions, Votem took over administering it. The process is relatively simple. After verifying their identity, voters cast their ballots in an app or on an online webpage. Votem’s software, built using blockchain protocol, tracks and checks the ballot from submission to when it is counted. Since the blockchain network is transparent, voters can track their ballot from casting to counting too.
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Onwrd Podcast
Onwrd: Secure Elections with Jeffrey Stern of Votem
Democracy could use a reboot. A systems upgrade. We are in the middle of the 21st Century, and many basic democratic structures are way out of date. Voting is one of the most obvious examples. In today’s episode, I talk to Jeffrey Stern of Votem, a mobile voting platform designed to securely cast votes in elections across the globe. Votem is one of many social innovators helping shift our democratic institutions into the digital age by improving the accessibility and security of the sacred right to vote. For more information, connect with twitter.com/@sternJefe
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The Brookings Institution
How blockchain could improve election transparency
This highlights a need to create awareness among the government officials and build the technological capabilities for making possible a technology-driven, transparent electoral process. According to Pete Martin, CEO of Votem and a proponent of online voting, we are two years away from major online elections running on blockchain in the U.S. As governments change, the process of electing such governments is bound to change too—and blockchain may have a part to play.
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Atelier BNP Paribas
Will we all soon be voting via the blockchain?
Votem is exploring the same territory, developing a system – also using blockchain technology – that enables citizens to vote in a secure manner on their smartphone. The Cleveland, Ohio-based company argues that this mechanism will help to discourage abstention by making it easier and more convenient to vote, reducing the risk of electoral fraud, and consequently restoring public trust in the democratic process. Having carried out a number of dry runs at private elections, Votem is planning to put this technology to the test at the forthcoming mid-term elections in the United States
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Stanford Graduate School of Business
Can Blockchain Be Used for Public Good
That potential extends well beyond the world of digital currencies, which is where blockchain remains in the popular imagination — for now. “People still think ‘bitcoin’ when they hear the word cryptocurrency,” Galen says, “but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface is the much more robust blockchain platform that goes well beyond bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.” A blockchain is essentially a shared digital ledger that records transactions and stores data in a transparent, decentralized way, making it a powerful tool for a range of social enterprises, from tracking coffee through a supply chain to building a credit system for the 2 billion “unbanked” people worldwide who still lack basic financial services. The study looked at applications in every major sector and found that healthcare, financial inclusion, aid, and democracy and governance were the areas with the most existing “blockchain for good” initiatives... ...During the 2016 U.S. elections, the Montana state government worked with Votem, a Cleveland-based mobile voting platform, to use distributed ledger technology for absentee voters. A post-election survey determined that 99% percent of voters who used the Montana system found it convenient and would use it again. “The potential for positive social impact in the U.S. is great,” the Stanford researchers write, noting that more than 2.6 million U.S. citizens living overseas were eligible to vote back home in 2014, but only 93,000 of them did — a turnout of 4%.
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CNN
Can this technology modernize how we vote?
Votem argues mobile voting has the potential to boost voter turnout, increase accuracy and reignite trust in election results. The company says it can verify and count votes in real time on its blockchain voting platform.