Every few years elections take place in our country or state to choose our leaders and every time this happens we hear the news all around that the elections were rigged or unfair, the voting machines were tampered with, or people were forced to vote for a particular candidate. Due to these reasons voting rates have dropped drastically and people feel that their votes wouldn't make any difference. And honestly, every time you come across this news, you sometimes feel that the whole system is corrupt and wish that there was a solution to this problem. Well, we have a solution now. Horizon State is decentralized engagement and decision platform used for voting. It uses blockchain technology which means the results can never be tampered with. Present day decision making systems are outdated, insecure, ineffective and somewhat slow. This is what served as the motivation behind Horizon State. Blockchain being a distributed ledger ensures that the voting is hundred percent safe and secure. There is absolutely no way of tampering with the results.
THE PLATFORM
Blockchain technology is the perfect technology for casting votes. Horizon State uses its Decision Tokens (HST) to operate and carry out other services. Horizon State aims to collaborate with partners and service providers to build Decentralized Apps (dApps) which will help in improving the state of existing decision making or voting process. Its first voting solution was launched for Australia's MiVote, which was used to participate in the country's elections. Its minimum viable product was in the form of an App that let its users vote from their mobile phones without worrying about their votes being tampered with. Horizon State uses immutability of blockchain to its advantage and is based on the Ethereum blockchain.
WHY HORIZON STATE
SECURITY
As mentioned above, it used blockchain technology which is distributed ledger which means that if any information stored, in this case you votes, on the blockchain is changed or edited, everyone on the blockchain is notified about that change. Therefore, it is literally impossible to hack into voting machines and change your votes. It is a amper-proof blockchain digital ballot box. The votes are cast as transactions to the Ethereum blockchain and do not contain any information about the identity of the voter. This helps the voter to cast his/her votes anonymously.
DIGITAL
You no more have to step out of your house and can vote from the comfort of your couch. This also solves the issue of booth capturing which has been seen in countries like India. This will also enable people living in geographically inaccessible areas to vote as all you need is an internet connection and a mobile or PC.
COST EFFECTIVE
Carrying out a referendum is expensive and the taxpayers are the ones who end up paying for it. For a standard election, you need voting machines, ballot boxes, ballot papers, poll booths, supervisors, etc. All these cost money and time to set up. In Australia alone, there are around 15.7 million eligible voters, which equals to $7.70 per vote. Horizon State aims to bring this cost to as low as $0.50. This can further go down as more solutions come up in the future.
VERSATILITY
Horizon State allows various organizations to create a poll on its platform. It can be any kind of poll, from choosing a mayor to voting for members of a board. Horizon State allows the user to define characteristics of their constituency on a campaign-by-campaign basis. Horizon State allows users to define the way their votes will be run, counted and inspected. Full anonymity or full transparency is both available, with degrees in between. The platform will also provide built-in audit function encouraging transparency across its ecosystem of services. It can also be used to conduct a full-fledged census covering the whole nations in a very short time.
ICO Details
Their token is very smartly named Decision Token (HST) which will be used by organisations and institutions to pay for the use of the product. All the funding will be accepted in Ethereum. A total of 1,000,000,000 (one billion) tokens will be generated of which 60% or 600,000,000 (six hundred million) will be available for sale. The allocation for the rest 40% is as follows: 28% allocated for company reserves, 8% for staff, 2% for advisors and 2% for bounties. The hard cap is set at 200,000 ETH.
REVIEW
I think a service like this was pending for a long time. Now that it is finally here, we must make full use of it and implement it to best of our knowledge. The two biggest problems that it solves according to me are, tampering of votes, by both booth capturing or hacking voting machines, and low voter turnout. It is completely digital and all you need is a mobile to cast your vote without having to worry about anything. I have seen and heard about blockchain being implemented in so many things, but this is by far the best use it has been put to. I hope governments around the world follow the example of Australia and use this to move towards a more transparent and secure democracy.
Please note: Terms and conditions on who can participate apply
For more information visit:
Website: https://horizonstate.com
Whitepaper: https://horizonstate.com/whitepaper/
Written By: Kishan748