Seoul City Opens Public Recruitment for 100 Participants in Ontact Citizen Governance System 'M-Voting' Citizen Participation Group

Recruiting 'Citizen Participation Group' to Operate e-MVoting with Seoul City Until the 17th
Applying Blockchain Technology Since 2019 to Prevent Voting Information Tampering

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 7th that it is recruiting the ‘M-Voting Citizen Participation Group’ to operate M-Voting together with the city until the 17th.

Seoul’s M-Voting is an electronic voting system that allows participation without a separate registration process. It is a platform that collects citizens’ opinions before policy decisions, reflects them in policies, and realizes citizen cooperation using M-Voting. Eligibility to apply is open to any citizen aged 18 or older who can use IT devices, and applications can be submitted through the main participation banner on the Seoul city website.

The M-Voting Citizen Participation Group will consist of 100 members, and if selected, they will carry out various missions such as discovering voting agenda items, providing system improvement suggestions, monitoring content, and promoting M-Voting until 2022.

Applications may close early depending on the number of submissions, and the final selection results of the Citizen Participation Group will be announced on the 18th via the Seoul city website and SMS. Before full-scale activities begin, an ‘M-Voting User Guide’ regarding the operation of the participation group will be provided in advance, and online video training will be conducted in accordance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines. For other inquiries related to M-Voting, contact the Seoul Smart City Office for detailed guidance.

Meanwhile, the ‘M-Voting system’ surpassed 3 million voting participants by the end of last year, and the number of members also exceeded 1 million. To block proxy voting and tampering with voting information, which are chronic problems of electronic voting, Seoul has introduced blockchain technology into M-Voting to ensure reliable identity verification and increase the trustworthiness of voting.

Representative cases where M-Voting has been conducted and reflected in actual policies include annual events such as resident participation budget project selection, architectural contests, satisfaction surveys, and various methods such as name and design preferences and surveys that can immediately collect opinions when necessary, gathering citizens’ opinions.

Lee Won-mok, Director of Smart City Policy at Seoul City, said, “In a situation where the need for non-face-to-face administrative services is increasing due to COVID-19, I hope M-Voting will be further activated as a representative channel for collecting citizens’ opinions. We also expect citizens to actively use M-Voting when various opinion collections are needed for groups such as acquaintances or organizations. To this end, Seoul plans to provide a more convenient and reliable electronic voting service.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.