HACK THE VOTE – a governance hackathon

The California Pirate Party presents Hack The Vote, a hackathon designed to build an open-source, publicly auditable voting system that organizations can use to conduct all their voting. The hackathon aims to bring together developers, designers, and community leaders to build a decentralized, transparent voting system using the Ethereum platform (EVM) and governance features built into Solidity, the language in which Ethereum smart contracts are written. Participants will collaborate to create a platform where community members can propose and vote on endorsements, initiatives, platform planks, and candidates, with each vote recorded immutably on the Polygon blockchain. By leveraging governance tokens, the system will ensure that voting power is distributed among stakeholders based on Proof of Attendance (POAP) and other holdings, empowering active community members to have a direct say in decision-making. The goal is to create a secure, publicly auditable system that is resistant to fraud, tampering, or central authority interference.

In addition to building the technical infrastructure, the hackathon will explore creative ways to make the voting process user-friendly, ensuring broad participation from both technical and non-technical users. Workshops and mentoring sessions will cover key topics like smart contract development, decentralized identity verification, and how to design fair token distribution models. By the end of the event, teams will present their solutions, which could form the foundation of a new wave of community governance tools applicable to DAOs, local governments, and non-profit organizations.

The hackathon will take place every Monday evening from September 23rd until November 4th on Discord!