Residents of King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, will become the first people in the U.S. to be able to cast a vote by smartphone, it was announced Wednesday.

It’s a modest start. The 1.2 million people in the area will be voting in the obscure King County Conservation District Board of Supervisors election, which will take place from Jan. 22 until Feb. 11. This is a first-of-its-kind in the U.S., although in recent years small numbers of voters have been allowed to cast a vote via smartphone when it was not possible for them to get to the polls.

In the past, only 1% to 3% of King County residents cast a vote in this election, so allowing them to vote with their phone is seen as something of a pilot project that, if successful, might expand into other elections. The new voting program was made possible by a collaboration among electronic balloting company Democracy Live, the National Cybersecurity Center, Tusk Philanthropies and King County Elections.

“There’s a lot of things we do online, banking, health records, that are also of concern for people that are secure,” King County Director of Elections Julie Wise told The Seattle Times. “I’ve vetted this, technology experts in the region have vetted this to ensure that this is a safe, secure voting opportunity.”

The position is for a board that oversees conservation practices in King County. In the past, the budget was eaten up by sending ballots out to all 1.2 million potential voters. This was addressed by emailing residents and asking them to request a ballot. The ballot was later sent and then had to be mailed back. In the last election only 1% of the King County population voted.

The new process is expected to boost the number of voters dramatically, since the system only requires a participant to log into a website using their name and birth date. Once they’ve voted, they will verify that and add a digital signature.

Removing the barriers for voting via smartphone might increase the voter turnout, but security experts over the years have said it’s not secure. In the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, those experts have routinely opposed the expansion of online voting.

Bradley Tusk, founder of Tusk Philanthropies, a nonprofit that funded the King County program, disagrees with that view.

“Everyone who doesn’t want this to happen is never going to say, ‘We oppose mobile voting because we don’t want higher turnout,'” Tusk told NPR. ”They’re going to say, ‘It’s not safe.’ And if we have proven 30, 40, 50 times over that it is safe, it’s a lot harder for those objections and arguments to fly.”

Photo: Amanda Wood/Flickr