This meetup focuses explicitly on what effect blockchain and distributed ledger technology can have on our current voting systems and even our democracy as a whole. We will focus on high-level questions such as whether blockchain and distributed ledger technology can:
- improve the security and transparency of our electoral registers, electronic voting machines, ballot counting procedures & online elections;
- allow citizens to become more engaged in our electoral process;
- provide corporate and organisational governance tools;
- increase the popularity of new types of governance systems such as liquid democracy and decentralised autonomous organisations.

We will also try to focus on the main issues in this area, such as:
- Is blockchain technology ready to host votes for millions of people?
- How should the votes be recorded exactly, what extra cryptography needs to be used?
- Would it be possible for the system owner to stuff the ballot box with fake votes?
- With a decentralised voting system, will we need a type of decentralised ID?
- Would a permissioned or public blockchain work best?
- How would the electorate actually use this system? Especially non-tech savvy people!

18:30 Attendees arrival
18:40: welcome From GBA London & VOLT Project - Tommy & one of the Profs. from the VOLT project.
18:45: GBA Worldwide Updates - Gerard Dache
18:55 Keynote presentation - Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic co-founder & CEO
19:10 Debate and Discussion with the Panel and Audience
20:10 Networking
21:00 End

Keynote: Antonio Mugica - founder and CEO at Smartmatic

Antonio Mugica is the founder and CEO of Smartmatic, one of the leading voting technology companies. They have helped hundreds of millions of voters cast ballots in government elections around the world. Smartmatic co-produce the TIVI product that underpins Estonia's online voting system, the only national online voting system in operation. Recently, blockchain technology has been added into their TIVI product and they have received European Commission funding to further investigate the role of blockchain tech in their election software.
https://twitter.com/antoniomugica?lang=en

Additional Panelists:

Joe Wadsworth - Information Services Director, Electoral Reform Service.

Joe has over 30 years experience implementing IT solutions for election management. He is directly responsible for computerising almost every aspect of ERS's election process. His role includes continuing to harness evolving technologies to further enhance ERS's services

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-wadsworth-5aa31b4/

Tom Wilkinson - Head of MI and Analytics at the Department For International Development

Tom Wilkinson is the Head of MI and Analytics at the Department For International Development, where he acts as a consultant on DLT and Blockchain applications within government. He is the coordinator of the UK Government's DLT community of interest group. Independently, he has helped allocate UK Research Council funding for DLT research.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-wilkinson-4ab5078b/

Steve Schneider- VOLT Project and Director at the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security,

He is the Director of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, and has been working in the area of secure online voting since 2004. In 2014, he co-develop the vVote voting system used by the state of Victoria, Australia for their electronic voting machines. Currently he is the principle investigator of the Voting Over Ledger Technology research project (www.volt-project.org) investigating the application of distributed ledger technologies to online voting and decentralised governance.

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/steve-schneider

Alex Jupiter - product manager at Democracy.Earth

Alex Jupiter is the product manager of Democracy.Earth, a non-profit foundation looking to implement DLT governance for a post nation-state world. Democracy.Earth's Sovereign app, currently in development, is a decentralized governance system that integrates a liquid democracy voting system.
https://twitter.com/AlexJupiter23

Moderator:

Luke Riley

Luke Riley is a post-doctoral member of the Voting over Ledger Technology project. His focus is on formally defining, developing and implementing the architecture for decentralised governance applications using DLT technology. As part of his work he has investigated online voting systems that have been deployed throughout the world.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-riley-36484221/