The Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Start-ups, Singapore (ACCESS) whose members include leading voices across Southeast Asia’s blockchain ecosystem, announced that it will be using a blockchain-based e-voting solution developed by ELECTIS to elect their new board members at the 2022 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Friday, 28th January 2022.
ELECTIS is a non-governmental organisation that strives to improve democratic systems by promoting the best usage of technologies for electoral processes. ELECTIS is built on Tezos, a decentralised, open-source blockchain that places precedence on community governance and participation. TZ APAC, the Asia-based blockchain adoption entity for the Tezos ecosystem is a member of ACCESS.
Anson Zeall, Chairman of ACCESS, said: “At ACCESS, we collectively represent the interests of some of the blockchain ecosystem’s leading organisations as we look to cement Singapore’s position as a hub for blockchain innovation. It’s only fitting that we, as an industry body, use live blockchain voting as a testament to how far this technology has come. With ELECTIS, we hope to emphasise the tangible benefits that blockchain can offer in ensuring integrity and accountability in corporate governance.”
ELECTIS.app is a web-based application that uses ElectionGuard to make voting more secure, transparent, and accessible. ElectionGuard was initially designed for election machines used in domestic standard elections in the United States. The Tezos blockchain then generates a “proof of election” via smart contract and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) decentralised storage is used to share the proof and ballots to attest to the integrity of the election.
To date, the ELECTIS.app has been used in cities in France (Neuilly-sur-Seine) and Switzerland (project Baloti). In November 2021, ELECTIS worked with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s official youth constituency YOUNGO for its elections during COP26.
Franck Nouyrigat and Gilles Mentré, Co-Founders of ELECTIS, said: “At ELECTIS, we endeavour to strengthen the foundations of democracy with technology. The ability to securely and transparently, in a verifiable manner, conduct elections is a fundamental human right that should be a standard across all governments and organizations. We hope that in supporting ACCESS for this year’s board elections at their AGM, we can show the true, transformative power that decentralization and blockchain can stand to offer in injecting greater trust in the electoral process.”
The blockchain voting during the ACCESS AGM will be conducted as follows: AGM attendees will undergo user authentication on the ELECTIS web app. Organisers create a “contest” that takes general information such as the name of the election, the number of votes per ballot, time period of the election, the candidates, and the voters eligible to participate — all of this information is stored in a smart contract. The smart contract would be equivalent to the legal documents that exist as proof that an election took place. A “Key Ceremony” will then be held to share the encryption keys for the election and for security purposes.
At the end of the voting, the cast ballots are published in their encrypted form in the election record. The encryption on ELECTIS is such that no individually casted ballots need to be decrypted to determine the results of the vote (homomorphic encryption). Once the election has concluded and the contest has been tallied and decrypted, the record of all related activities as part of the election will be published on IPFS decentralised storage and the artefacts of the election recorded on the Tezos blockchain.
The ACCESS 2022 AGM will include an address by ACCESS Chairman Anson Zeall. Voting for the 2022/2024 Executive Committee includes the appointment of a new chairman, secretary-general, treasurer, along with 4 committee members. In addition, the AGM will also see discussion of any proposals, if any, from members in attendance.
ACCESS is a non-profit organisation for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry in Singapore. As an industry body, ACCESS aims to facilitate the education, engagement, and advocacy for Singapore as a premier blockchain and fintech hub. In 2020, ACCESS became the world’s first association to officially implement blockchain-based on-premise voting in a live environment for attending members. The Ethereum-based solution was developed by ACCESS member JEDTrade, an enterprise blockchain technology solutions provider.
About ACCESS
ACCESS is a non-profit organisation for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in Singapore. Members represent a spectrum of businesses within the Singapore blockchain and cryptocurrency space, including exchanges, merchant transaction services, vending machines suppliers and miners, and abide by a Code of Conduct that is in line with our mission statement. ACCESS has grown its membership from 7 companies since its establishment in 2014 to over 400 companies today.
For more information, please visit: https://www.access.org.sg/
About ELECTIS
ELECTIS is a non-governmental organisation based on the following principles: non-profit, non-commercial, and politically and philosophically neutral. Our core purpose is to help improve our democratic systems by promoting the best usage of technologies (“Tech for Democracy”), with a specific focus on electoral processes which are at the core of democratic life.
For more information, please visit: https://electis.io/