MORGANTOWN — Secretary of State Mac Warner is extending the Voatz mobile voting pilot program for uniformed services members and overseas citizens from two counties to the entire state for the November general election.
Warner said in a press release 24 counties have opted in. Monongalia and Harrison participated in the pilot. Those joining for November are Preston, Berkeley, Cabell, Grant, Greenbrier, Hancock, Jackson, Jefferson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Marshall, Monroe, Morgan, Nicholas, Ohio, Putnam, Raleigh, Roane, Summers, Wayne and Wetzel.
For this election, eligible UOCAVA voters — Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act voters —will have the option to vote on their cell phone or mobile tablet via the Voatz app.
UOCAVA voters are active military and members of the Merchant Marine, the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, their eligible family members, and U.S. citizens living outside the U.S.
As previously reported, Voatz employs two types of security to protect the validity of the votes cast. One is biometric identification via the smartphone: thumbprint and facial recognition.
The other is a type of technology called “blockchain,” employed by financial and healthcare institutions. Blockchain is sometimes called “distributed ledger technology” because it operates like a paper or single-computer financial ledger but is distributed across multiple, geographically separated servers called “verifiers” because their function is to verify the authenticity of the blocks (collection of votes) before they are added to the blockchain.
bsentee voting begins Friday and the ballot must be submitted by no later than 7:30 p.m. Nov. 6. UOCAVA voters have until Oct. 31 to submit their Federal Post Card Application to register to vote and/or request an absentee ballot with their county clerk. They will receive their ballot within 24 hours of the clerk’s receipt of the application.
Warner said in his press release that voters from six countries used the app in the primary election. Post-election security audits by several independent and widely respected technology auditing companies showed that the technology provided a secure platform for voting and an alternative to the traditional absentee paper ballot.
