Overstock Touts Voatz Blockchain Voting App as Solution to US Election Fracas

Oct 30, 2020 at 18:09 UTCUpdated Oct 30, 2020 at 18:30 UTC.Days before a U.S. presidential election marred by court fights over vote counting and partisan allegations of rampant mail-in ballot fraud, Overstock.com is once again touting what it calls a solution: blockchain voting.

"If [voting] doesn't work as well as it should, next week think about how Voatz could have solved that," Overstock chief Jonathan Johnson told investors during OSTK's Oct. 29 earnings call.

Johnson, who is also president of Overstock's blockchain investments subsidiary Medici Ventures, was referring to the Medici-backed mobile voting app Voatz, which claims to use blockchain technology to secure users' vote.

Elections officials in 29 of America's 3,141 counties have allowed certain absentee voters to cast ballots via Voatz in past elections, Johnson said.

Johnson's comments suggest that Medici sees an even wider opening for its mobile voting company in the wake of next week's election.

Voting experts are anticipating a messy and lengthy vote count that could cloud the rhetorically charged presidential race with yet more uncertainty.

Whether Voatz works as well as it should is similarly uncertain.

Voatz said at the time it had addressed vulnerabilities identified in a separate U.S. Department of Homeland Security cyber audit.

Weeks prior to MIT's report, a Voatz service outage threatened to derail Tufts University's student senate races.

Voatz called that outage "Precautionary."