Referring to the tense pandemic situation worldwide in 2021, Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation added the option of remote voting to its list of requirements to the meetings of dissertation councils. The experts of Samarian State Agrarian University tried a number of e-voting blockchain services but for some reason weren’t satisfied with them.

After testing a number of blockchain e-voting services, Samarian State Agrarian University has chosen WE.Vote, developed by Waves Enterprise.

“Before WE.Vote we had some experience with some other e-voting services, including blockchain-based ones. Working with them wasn’t easy and simple enough. It’s very important for us because the council includes people of different ages with different computer experience. The other problem was insufficient speed and stability of those services. But with WE.Vote we are satisfied both by the speed and the ease of use. The votings at dissertation councils now take just a little time, and we never have to reschedule due to technical issues”, — Alexey Tolpekin, leading IT specialist of Samarian State Agrarian University.

During the meetings, the members of dissertation councils listen to the degree seekers either offline or remotely through videoconferencing. Then they dispute and vote for or against awarding the seeker with an academic degree. Thanks to WE.Vote, the voting stage takes 10 minutes only. The council members can vote remotely either with their computer or mobile device. The voting administrator can manually close the voting as soon as he gets a notification that all the council members have sent their e-ballots.

• Ballot secrecy during the whole e-voting, even while tallying results;
• Possibility for every voter to check if his vote was taken into account;

• Service reliability thanks to its decentralization;
• Impossibility of falsifying and excluding votes during the tallying;

With the WE.Vote Samarian State Agrarian University has already organized several meetings of dissertation councils. The university plans to use it in the future awards of academic degrees — the most important achievements for any scientist.