The European open source Voxit community has reached a significant strategic milestone: the establishment of a shared European Voxit codebase has been completed. This achievement strengthens Europe’s capacity to co-create digital infrastructure based on its own values and supports the European Union’s objectives of reinforcing technological sovereignty and the resilience of democracy.
Over the past months, the community has worked systematically to carry out a technical assessment of the different platform versions created in several European countries. Based on this assessment, it was decided that the shared Voxit platform codebase would be built on the version developed in the Netherlands, which proved to be the most technically suited in the comparison.
The completed shared Voxit codebase lays the foundation for European cooperation in which public-sector actors, developers and civil society can jointly develop and experiment with digital democracy tools. By pooling limited technical resources, the European Voxit community can accelerate development and research, improve the security of the platform and ensure that the solutions reflect European values, regulation and societal needs.
The shared codebase also enables the full-scale use of the open source operating model: development work carried out in one region can be quickly shared for use across the entire community. This creates the basis for scalable digital infrastructure that reduces dependence on individual vendors and strengthens Europe’s own technological expertise.
“The shared codebase is more than a technical solution – it is a strategic investment in Europe’s digital sovereignty and democratic infrastructure. By building open and interoperable solutions together, we can strengthen the resilience of democracy and ensure that key tools for participation remain within the sphere of European values and public governance,” says Timo Väliharju, Executive Director of COSS – the Finnish Centre for Open Systems and Solutions.
COSS is responsible for the national coordination of the Voxit community in Finland and has been actively involved in the platform’s international cooperation from the outset.
The completion of the European codebase has been made possible through close collaboration. Agora, Bertelsmann Stiftung, Beta Break, Copernicani, COSS, CrownShy, East of Moon, Fre(i)e Software GmbH, Haltu, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (Netherlands), Policy Lab (UK Government), the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, Tiltshift, the Province of South Holland, and individual project members have all contributed to enabling the platform development, technical assessment and the creation of the shared European codebase.
The Voxit community and platform development
The Voxit participation platform is originally based on the open source Polis platform developed by The Computational Democracy Project in the United States, but since its establishment in autumn 2025, the European Voxit community has been developing an independent solution, adapted to European needs.
The aim is to create an open source, interoperable and scalable participation infrastructure suited to Europe’s regulatory environment and aligned with democratic values. Through this development work, Voxit is becoming a clearly distinct fork of the original Polis platform – allowing Europe to develop participatory infrastructure at its own pace and according to its own governance needs, while the original Polis project continues to break new ground. This enables Europe to build its own open and trustworthy digital democracy tools, rooted in public governance and European democratic traditions.
Voxit 1.0 source code is now available
The source code for version 1.0 of the European community edition of the Voxit platform has now been published and is openly maintained on GitLab.com at: https://gitlab.com/voxit/voxit#