Sequent’s cryptographic voting platform enables secure, remote participation in national elections from 77 countries, via mobile or desktop.
For the first time in history, more than 1.2 million overseas Filipino citizens cast their votes in a national election entirely online. The platform behind this unprecedented digital participation is an advanced voting system developed by Sequent, an American-Israeli startup bringing cryptographic innovation to the democratic process.
The Philippines Commission on Elections (Comelec) tapped Sequent to digitize and secure the overseas voting process, eliminating the need for ballots to be cast in person at embassies or consulates, often after hours of travel. The result: voters across 77 countries were able to authenticate their identity and vote in minutes, directly from a mobile phone or computer.
A Digital Breakthrough for Democracy
Sequent’s system addresses the most critical challenges in remote voting: secure identity verification, guaranteed ballot secrecy, and verifiable election integrity. Biometric authentication initiates the process, followed by vote casting through advanced cryptographic protocols that ensure each ballot remains confidential and is counted exactly as cast. The platform produces mathematical proofs that each vote was correctly cast, recorded and counted, without exposing voter identities or selections.
All of this happens on an open-source system, enabling full transparency and external audits by governments, civil society, and the security research community.
“Trust in elections is declining globally, especially in municipal and government elections,” says Shai Bargil, CEO and co-founder of Sequent. “People want transparency and certainty, but also privacy and ease of access. Our system delivers all of that, with technology that’s secure, verifiable, and accessible to everyone.”
Auditable by Design
During the Philippine elections, Sequent’s platform enabled, for the first time, a digital recount-like audit that could be independently performed by the public or civil society groups, without needing to trust the system or the vendor. The entire verification process took less than five minutes and incurred minimal cost.
Previously, millions of overseas voters had to physically visit the embassies, often located hundreds of kilometers away, to participate in the national elections. Many simply opted out. By eliminating these barriers, Sequent’s solution makes ballot access seamless, helps drive up voter turnout in many jurisdictions and proves that secure online voting at scale is not only possible, it’s efficient.
Global Footprint and Growing
While this was Sequent’s debut on the stage of national elections, the technology has already been deployed in over 200 elections globally, serving more than 3.6 million voters. Its clients range from municipalities, universities, political parties, labor unions, and even religious organizations.
Beyond accessibility and security, the cost savings are notable: Sequent’s platform reduces per-voter costs from roughly $10 in traditional setups to under $2.
Built to Meet Global Standards
Sequent’s cryptographic voting infrastructure is designed to meet the world’s most stringent election security frameworks, including CAN/DGSI (Canada), BSI TR-03161 (Germany), and NIST/DoL (United States). It provides mitigation steps against malware on voters’ devices, preserves voter privacy, and supports full, independent audits, even without reliance on the system provider.
Founded in 2021 by Shai Bargil, Eduardo Robles (CTO), and David Roskes (Head of Research), Sequent has offices across Israel, Spain, the US and Canada. The company is a graduate of Israel’s Fusion VC accelerator.
“Like online banking and e-commerce, the voting process is overdue for a digital upgrade,” says Bargil. “But the bar is higher – security and public trust are non-negotiable. With our cryptographic foundation, we’ve shown that digital voting can meet and exceed those expectations.”
Credit: Sequent
