Elections

We have created the world's most trusted and secure digital ballot box

Horizon State is where decisions are made; where everyone can be confident the voting process was fair, transparent and secure. This leads to improved relationships with constituents, customers and members.

Elect leaders in an extremely secure and trusted online environment

Give your constituents confidence that your electoral process is fair, transparent, and counted accurately using our publicly-auditable electronic voting system. 

Build real trust between you and your community

Horizon State means that you can prove for the first time to your constituents that there was no tampering by any party within your election process. This commitment to fairness and transparency gives your voting communities greater trust in the process and encourages them to build closer relationships with you, boosting the public perception of your organisation.

Help your constituents make more informed voting decisions

Include personal and policy information for each candidate within the voting portal. Horizon State is much more efficient and more likely to get each candidates message across, giving your constituents the information they need to make the best decision when choosing who to vote for. 

Eliminate ineligible voters and invalid ballots
Have confidence that only registered voters can participate. The Horizon State platform ensures votes are completed correctly before they are submitted, preventing invalid ballots that have plagued legacy paper voting, and called the results from entire elections into question.
Get instant results
No more manual counting or waiting for special votes to trickle in before the final result can be called. Horizon State tells you who was elected straight away
Increase participation and engagement from your community
You want to engage with your community today. The members of that community prefer to do everything online. Horizon State’s secure online voting platform and intuitive, easy to use interface means your constituents can participate from anywhere at their convenience using any web-capable device.
More cost effective and sustainable

Secure online voting greatly reduces the overheads involved in administering your election. There is reduced need for physical polling stations, and staff to oversee the process. Electronic voting also does not rely on disposable materials like pencils and paper ballots, making the entire process more affordable and eco-friendly. 

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The case for secure electronic voting

Elections are crucial to the future direction of organisations and communities, they decide how crucial resources are allocated, and which leaders are appointed.

With something so important, and with all the concerns about administration costs, vote tampering and foreign interference, election integrity has become a paramount concern for stakeholders looking for certainty.

Customers want convenience, and to save time doing things online. In a survey conducted by Australia Post, 73% of Australian voters wanted to be able to vote online by the 2019 general election. The security risks present in the current generation of online-voting systems, however, have so far prevented this being realised.

Legacy voting systems are not serving the public interest

Paper-voting solutions don’t have a glowing track record either. They are slow, inefficient and costly. The 2016 Australian election saw 14% of ballots cast via postal vote, resulting in an eight day delay before an outright winner could be declared. Paper ballot systems present an expensive risk profile from election tampering and human error. 1,370 missing ballots voided an election in Western Australia after the 2013 federal election and a second election was held at a cost of more than $20 million.

An even greater concern is the possibility of election results being called incorrectly because of miscounts or invalid votes. 

New Zealand’s 2019 local council elections experienced some controversy due to lack of finality and reliability surrounding the counting of paper votes. The country’s Department of Internal Affairs is now looking into a review of the Local Electoral Act after a recount of a council seat in Whakatāne led to a judge ordering a ‘different interpretation’ of a single paper vote that overturned a coin-toss conclusion. Multiple recounts elsewhere in the country yielded different tallies to the originals, but not enough to change outcomes. Residents in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, waited a month for a winner to be declared in its Mayoral race after being legally-contested on the premise that a significant number of invalid votes could change the outcome. A judge ruled that recount costs estimated into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a recount of 60 thousand votes was not in the public interest.

The issue of invalid votes is a significant one. In 2016 confusion between two voting systems used in Nelson in New Zealand’s district health board and council elections caused 1471 cast votes to be deemed invalid and not counted. Many voters placed ticks next to their preferred candidate as they had in the first past the post (FPP) system used in the council election instead of placing numbers next to candidates in order of preference called for by the single transferable vote (STV) system used by the district health board. The invalid votes made up three percent of the total votes cast – more than enough to turn an election.

The systemic vulnerabilities, issues and costs of legacy paper voting and current electronic voting systems pose a greater risk to election integrity and democratic process than any external threat. Horizon State improves on them to a best-in-class level. Horizon State brings security, finality and confidence to the online voting process for the first time.

Voters trust what they can see

Voters today are wary of the security of their data online and the integrity of many digital processes. They are now aware that even the world’s largest companies cannot be trusted to keep private information safe or private. A growing majority of people also intuitively understand that centralised voting providers, whether paper or digital, are prone to the risk of human error and unauthorised breaches by employees or external parties. They don’t want to just take your word for it, or the claims of an outsourced company that their closed-door process is fair and secure. If you are not employing a voting system that your voters can have absolute trust in, then your members will not trust you.

Horizon State offers a solution that removes the doubt from this equation. Anonymous vote data is published to an incorruptible public database that your members can access and audit. They can verify themselves that their vote was not only received correctly, but recorded and counted properly in the final tally. Instead of your members relying on your voting provider to be ‘independent’, ‘honest’ and ‘secure’, we have incorporated them into Horizon State’s state-of-the-art platform at the protocol level, meaning they are built into the software as a mandatory feature.

A Vehicle to build public trust

Horizon State empowers public opinion and expands leader accountability. Citizens can be polled more regularly about their views on individual issues, and Horizon State software provides the trusted mechanism to ensure that this information can be relied upon. Elected leaders can then be held accountable.

With the wealth of information being shared online and the potential for reportage bias, it is important for voters to have access to impartial and direct information about each candidate and their policies. Current paper ballot and online voting solutions generally do not include this provision, and in countries like Australia that have compulsory voting, large numbers of constituents are left to vote blindly.

Horizon State’s online convenience means voters no longer need to spend time waiting in traffic or queues to participate in elections. Instead, they can cast their vote, verify that it was counted correctly, and even audit the election result at any location convenient to them.

The trust Horizon State builds with its users and its cost-effectiveness allows governments, councils, and political leaders to demonstrate public accountability on policy. By embracing regular engagement with voters, leaders can empower their voices on individual issues more regularly and boost the chances of reelection. Horizon State’s verifiable and trusted platform means political figures can regularly engage the public to ensure they are doing what is right or popular, and the public can hold them accountable for what is learned or seek justification for decisions made against their will.

With the cost of holding elections steadily rising over time, like Australia’s estimated $227 million cost for its 2016 federal election, or around $15 dollars per voter, the need for a cost-effective and secure online-voting solution is greater than ever. With capacity to greatly reduce some of the costs that make up elections, the social impact of the fair, transparent, and secure online voting opportunity that Horizon State presents to developing nations and fragile democracies cannot be overstated.