West Virginians serving in the military will be able to vote via app this November

In November, West Virginia residents serving in the military overseas may only have to pick up their smartphone to vote.

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner told CNN "there is nobody that deserves the right to vote any more than the guys that are out there, and the women that are out there, putting their lives on the line for us." The app they can use was developed by the Boston-based company Voatz, which says it's a perfectly secure way to vote. To register, users must take a photo of their government-issued ID, then take a video of their face, and upload both to the app. Voatz's facial recognition software will then check the ID picture against the video for final approval, and the ballots are recorded anonymously on a blockchain.

State officials are letting each county decide if they want to approve Voatz, and service members will still have the option of using a paper ballot to vote. Some security experts are alarmed by the idea of voting via app, with Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, telling CNN that mobile voting is "a horrific idea. It's internet voting on people's horribly secured devices, over our horrible networks, to servers that are very difficult to secure without a physical paper record of the vote."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up