Follow My Vote, Inc. that develops open-source blockchain voting software, has announced that it has released the initial Alpha for the Follow My Vote stakeweighted blockchain voting software.

According to the official release, the alpha version runs on a blockchain using the open-source Graphene Blockchain Framework. The features that can be explored in the alpha release include casting votes, publishing contests and tallying the results of the contest.

“I am excited to present the alpha of our stake-weighted voting system. Although the feature is not yet complete, this version has the core components, all utilizing a live Graphene blockchain as the data store and public key infrastructure. This alpha serves not only as a demonstration of our technology but also as the foundation for the development of our more advanced anonymous, verified identity system which we will use to run a parallel election to the United States Presidential Election in November,” Nathan Hourt, co-founder & CTO of Follow My Vote said.

The alpha version also has TLS Encryption using the blockchain as the certificate authority for client and server communication. The idea behind the stakeweighted voting is that not all voters should have an equal amount of influence over the outcome of an election or contest. For example, if a shareholder who owns 60% of a company, the person would like to have the voting power that corresponds to the level of the person’s ownership in the company.

The release of the alpha follows the recent crowdfunding success of Follow My Vote on Kickstarter. Stakeweighted voting software’s one of the first real applications will be with MERITs, the digital currency tokens of Follow My Vote. Stake-weighted polls will be run within the voting software to prioritize development based on market demand. These polls will be weighted in MERIT.