Sequent Tech is an online voting company, founded in 2021, that runs end-to-end verifiable elections for governments, municipalities, unions, universities, and political parties. Its largest deployment was the 2025 Philippine midterms, where about 1.23 million registered overseas voters in 77 locations could vote online. In May 2026 it was selected by 15 Ontario municipalities for the October 26, 2026 elections.
Updated October 10, 2026. Part of EPR's coverage of AI Communications and trust technology. Figures marked as company figures come from Sequent's own announcements and interviews.
Key facts
- Founded: 2021, by Shai Bargil (CEO), Eduardo Robles (CTO), and David Ruescas (Head of Research).
- Offices: Israel, Spain, and North America. Press coverage describes it as a U.S.-Israeli company.
- Scale (company figures, May 2026): more than 300 elections and more than 4.5 million voters.
- Flagship deployment: the Philippines' 2025 overseas vote, about 1.23 million registered voters across 77 locations.
- Next milestone: 15 Ontario municipalities and more than 208,000 registered voters on October 26, 2026.
- Funding: $1.35 million total raised, according to a Calcalist profile.
What is Sequent Tech and who founded it?
Sequent Tech Inc. develops and operates an online voting platform built on cryptographic verification. Its founders are Shai Bargil, the chief executive, Eduardo Robles, the chief technology officer, and David Ruescas, the head of research. Calcalist's CTech profiled the three founders, and Israeli outlets describe Sequent as an Israeli startup with offices in Israel, Spain, and North America.
The company serves institutions that need a binding result: national and municipal governments, universities, political parties, labor unions, and professional associations. A CityBiz report on the Philippine deployment lists customers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. The same report quotes the company's claim that its platform lowered per-vote cost to under $2 and reduced voting costs for election managers by up to 80%. Those cost figures are company claims.
Where did Sequent come from?
Sequent's technical lineage runs through two earlier Spanish open-source projects, Agora Voting and nVotes, and Sequent itself is a company founded in 2021. In an interview with Pulse 2, Bargil said Sequent's origins date back to an open-source project for political party elections in Europe in 2011, which Robles and Ruescas worked on. When the three founded Sequent in 2021, he said, they incorporated that early work and redeveloped it to meet the requirements of national elections. Today, he said, Sequent has its own cryptographic voting protocol and libraries.
The earlier history is documented independently. In an openDemocracy interview series on the politics of code, Ruescas said he began developing Agora Voting in 2009 and was later joined by Robles and Lucas Cervera. The project was renamed nVotes in 2016. According to the same piece, over 155,000 members of the Spanish party Podemos voted online between February 4 and February 11, 2017, and a few days later more than 150,000 Madrid residents voted in the city's first binding referendums, both on Agora Voting.
That experience gave the founders an early, public view of how digital ballots behave in high-stakes political settings. It is the foundation Sequent says it built on, and the platform's own deployments, from 2021 onward, are described in the sections below.
What makes Sequent's approach notable?
Sequent's approach combines three things that are often separate: an open-source heritage, a cryptographic design meant to be checked by outsiders, and integration with the systems election offices already use. Each is documented in company materials or in third-party coverage.
Open-source heritage and its own protocol
The founders came from open-source voting projects, and Sequent describes its platform as built on open-source software and advanced cryptographic protocols, according to the Calcalist profile. Open code matters in elections because outside experts can inspect it. Philippine press reported that local experts reviewed the source code of the voting system before the 2025 election.
End-to-end verifiability
End-to-end verifiable voting is a design in which voters and outside auditors can check an election with cryptographic evidence instead of relying only on the vendor. The academic literature describes three checks: a ballot is cast as intended, recorded as cast, and counted as recorded. Sequent says its platform provides this property, so that voters can confirm their vote was cast and counted and auditors can confirm the results are correct. A LinkedIn post by Oded Tsur says that after the Philippine vote, the Commission on Elections and civil society observers ran audits using zero-knowledge proofs that confirmed the count in under five minutes.
Fit with existing election infrastructure
In Ontario, Sequent highlights a real-time data partnership with DataFix Municipal VoterView, the voter list system used by hundreds of municipalities in the province. For a clerk's office, integration with the voter list can matter as much as the cryptography, because eligibility and list management are where most administrative work happens.
Hybrid voting
Bargil told Pulse 2 that Sequent's vision combines secure, verifiable digital voting for both in-person and remote voters, backed by paper trails that voters themselves can verify. The Ontario agreements likewise allow residents to vote online or at designated in-person locations. Hybrid models let an election office offer convenience without removing the familiar option.
What is Sequent's track record?
Sequent's published numbers have grown quickly, and they come from the company. The table lists them by the date of the source, because figures differ across interviews and releases as the company adds elections.
| Source and timing | Elections | Voters or votes | Notes |
|---|
| Pulse 2 interview, published before the April 2025 Philippine vote | Over 200, in 10 countries | 3.2 million votes counted | Bargil also expected about 1.7 million overseas Filipinos to be eligible. |
| CityBiz and Calcalist, after the May 2025 Philippine vote | More than 210 | Over 3.6 million voters | Includes the Philippine overseas vote. |
| Press release, May 12, 2026 | More than 300 | Over 4.5 million voters | Announced alongside the Ontario selection. |
The mix of customers is as telling as the totals. Sequent says it serves governments, municipalities, universities, parties, unions, and professional associations. In the Pulse 2 interview, Bargil described a large Spanish association that used the platform for its national and regional elections. For readers comparing vendors, "voters" and "votes counted" are different measures, and "elections" spans everything from national votes to association ballots, so it helps to ask for figures by election type and size.
What happened in the 2025 Philippine overseas election?
The Philippine midterms of May 2025 were Sequent's largest public deployment. They were the first time the country offered internet voting to most overseas voters, and the project is documented by Philippine news outlets, the Commission on Elections (Comelec), and an independent review by International IDEA.
How was Sequent selected?
According to Rappler, Comelec signed a deal on June 25, 2024, with a joint venture led by the Filipino company SMS Global Technologies in partnership with the U.S.-based Sequent Tech. The Online Voting and Counting System cost about 112 million pesos, according to an Inquirer report. The aim was to raise overseas turnout. In 2022, only around 600,000 of some 1.6 million registered overseas voters cast ballots, about 38%, according to the Philippine News Agency, and Comelec said a 70% to 80% turnout would be an achievement.
How was the system reviewed before the vote?
Local experts began reviewing the system's source code in October 2024, and Comelec extended the review to January 2025 to allow a more thorough examination, the Inquirer reported. Comelec's chair said Sequent had committed to address the issues raised by that January. A public source code review before an election is the kind of scrutiny that open-source voting is designed to welcome.
How did voting go?
Overseas voting ran for a month from April 13, 2025, with 77 of 90 diplomatic posts participating, according to GMA News. About 1.2 million of 69.6 million registered voters were overseas. The company reports that more than 1.23 million registered voters could vote from their own devices, without traveling to an embassy or consulate, and a Sequent executive's account says the post-election cryptographic audit completed in minutes.
What did the independent review conclude?
International IDEA published "Online overseas voting: key insights from the 2025 Philippines midterm elections" in December 2025. The report examines the legal context, voter access and trust, and cybersecurity, and concludes that online voting shows long-term promise despite early limitations. Its lessons are useful for any country considering remote voting: clear legal authority, strong enrollment, and voter-friendly verification are as important as the technology.
What does the Philippine experience mean for future elections?
The Philippine deployment showed that verifiable online voting can run at national scale, and it showed where the attention goes in practice. Voters and observers pay close attention to what a voter sees after casting a ballot, so a simple, readable confirmation is part of the product. For Ontario, where municipal clerks and residents are not cryptographers, the practical goal is a confirmation that a resident can understand and a clerk can explain in one sentence.
Why did 15 Ontario municipalities select Sequent for October 2026?
Fifteen Ontario municipalities selected Sequent to deliver online voting for more than 208,000 registered voters in the elections to be held on October 26, 2026. The May 12, 2026 press release says the platform was chosen for its cryptographic architecture, compliance with Canadian and international voting standards, and integration with Ontario's election infrastructure. Residents can vote online or at designated in-person locations.
Ontario is a large and experienced market. Municipal reports show 217 of 444 Ontario municipalities used internet voting in 2022, and a Brock University researcher put the figure at 222. Online voting was introduced in the province in 2003. Winning 15 municipal contracts in a market with two decades of history is a significant step for a company founded in 2021, and Sequent describes it as an important step in its broader North American expansion.
Standards are also advancing. A national standard for online municipal voting, CAN/DGSI 111-1, was published in December 2024, and a revision was open for public comment through March 3, 2026, according to Brock University. Sequent's release says its platform complies with Canadian and international standards, which gives municipal clerks a clear benchmark for their review.
Where does Sequent fit among online voting providers?
Online voting providers serve different segments, and Sequent's focus is verifiable voting for government and institutional elections. The segments below show where different kinds of providers operate.
- Municipal internet and telephone voting in Canada: providers such as Simply Voting, which markets paper, internet, and telephone options for Ontario's 2026 elections.
- Association and member elections: cloud platforms such as ElectionBuddy, which CB Insights lists as founded in 2017 and based in Edmonton.
- Academic and open-audit projects: systems such as Helios, an open-source voting system developed in the research community to demonstrate verifiable elections.
- Government-run systems: Estonia's i-Voting, the long-running national example that Philippine coverage used as a comparison.
Sequent's position within that landscape is the combination of end-to-end verifiability, open-source roots, and national-scale operation. Its Philippine and Ontario deployments are the evidence for scale. Its open-source heritage and the audits reported after the Philippine vote are the evidence for verifiability.
How should an election office evaluate an online voting provider?
An election office should ask for evidence on five points, and the questions apply to any provider. They help a clerk or board document why a platform was chosen.
- Which verifiability checks can a voter perform without technical skill? Ask to see the voter's screen and the confirmation a voter receives.
- Who has reviewed the system, and where is the report? Ask for the reviewer, scope, date, and findings.
- Which parts of the code are open? Ask which components outside experts can inspect.
- What references exist at a similar scale? Ask for named clients of a similar size and legal context.
- What is the fallback plan? Ask for the procedure if a system fails mid-election, including in-person options and the legal basis for each.
How does Sequent communicate its record?
Sequent's strongest public evidence is documentary: government selections, third-party coverage, and the International IDEA review. For a trust technology company, the most useful communications assets are dated, citable, and specific. Three practices stand out.
Dated figures. Sequent's totals have grown from over 200 elections and 3.2 million votes in an interview published before the Philippine vote to more than 300 elections and over 4.5 million voters in May 2026. A dated figure with a clear definition lets journalists and buyers cite the right number.
A consistent origin story. The company traces roots to 2009 or 2011 depending on the source, and coverage describes it as Spanish, Israeli, or U.S.-Israeli depending on the outlet. A single canonical statement of founding year, founders, offices, and relationship to Agora Voting and nVotes helps every article describe the company the same way.
Independent documents. Government announcements, standards bodies, and research institutes carry the most weight with buyers and with search and AI systems that rely on public sources. EPR has not tested how any AI engine currently describes Sequent, and this profile makes no claim about it. The method for running that test is in our guide to measuring AI visibility.
What should readers watch next?
- The October 26, 2026 Ontario elections. Fifteen municipalities and more than 208,000 registered voters make it Sequent's largest North American deployment to date.
- The revised Canadian online voting standard. CAN/DGSI 111-1 will shape the benchmark municipalities use to evaluate providers.
- Further national deployments. The Philippine project came through a procurement with a local joint venture, and the next national contract will show how the model travels.
Sources
Company and funding: Calcalist CTech founder profile; Pulse 2 interview with Shai Bargil; CityBiz and TechRound coverage of the Philippine deployment; Sequent press release of May 12, 2026. History: openDemocracy interview with David Ruescas on Agora Voting and nVotes. Philippines: Rappler, Inquirer, GMA News, Philippine News Agency, and the International IDEA report published in December 2025. Ontario and standards: municipal clerk reports from Pelham and Springwater, Brock University, and the Digital Governance Standards Institute. Israeli coverage: Bizportal and mako (Hebrew).
Everything-PR has no commercial relationship with Sequent Tech. Company figures are labeled as company claims and were not independently audited.
