Medici Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of online retail giant Overstock, has led a $2.2 million seed funding round of Voatz, a blockchain-based voting startup.

The funding round also received support from the Urban Innovation Fund and Oakhouse Partners. Other notable investors in the round include Walt Winshall, Michael Dornbrook, Joe Caruso and members of the Walnut Ventures angels group.

"We are delighted and grateful for the support we have received from our investors to help grow our team and accelerate the deployment of our cutting edge voting and citizen engagement platform,” Voatz Co-Founder & CEO Nimit Sawhney said.

Voatz said that it will use the funds to build its business development team, expand its reach across the United States and accelerate the development of several exciting new product features.

Founded in 2014, Voatz enables citizens to vote in many types of elections and voting events via a secured smartphone or tablet. It uses biometrics for security and blockchain technology to ensure tamper-proof recordkeeping, identity verification and auditing.

"Voatz is a great addition to the Medici Ventures portfolio. The Voatz team has developed a leading solution to usher in an era of greater efficiency and transparency in voting," said Medici Ventures President Jonathan Johnson. "Democracy will benefit greatly from critical improvements blockchain technology can bring to voting systems. For example, providing secure, immutable record keeping will bring greater confidence in accurate results, and ease of use will lower the barrier to entry for citizens to participate in elections. We look forward to partnering with the Voatz team to improve this critical function of society."

Voatz platform is already being used by a number of universities, labor unions, state political parties, church groups and non-profits for their internal elections, convention voting, and other voting functions. The company is currently in the process of deploying its technology for town meeting voting in Massachusetts. The platform is currently accessible by invitation only and will be accessible to a wider audience in the coming weeks, the release said.