If you're not living in, or around, Sierra Leone, then you probably don't know that the country recently held presidential elections. And by recently I mean yesterday.
There were 16 candidates, a heated campaign and, floating way under the radar, a blockchain-powered election process, implemented and supervised by a company called Agora. It used a proprietary, permission-based blockchain to count and validate the votes in real time, setting up a world's first.
If you're interested in a detailed story about this, including the entire political and social background, then Coindesk has a nice report for you.
As for me, I'm pondering how long until permissionless blockchains - a.k.a. decentralized blockchains - will be used for elections in Western countries as well. Or not only for elections, maybe even for real-time governance.
I have a hunch that it will happen way sooner than the politicians would expect...
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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Decentralized blockchains are the only way to go, these permissioned blockchains are no better than standard databases, and in some cases even worse.
Like I ever believed, blockchain coming into play at a pace faster than ever....
This is a real milestone achieved by the blockchain till today. Very soon other countries also will implement it .
This is something i wish my country adopts. Elections here happen through EVM's. Some opposition parties accuse the ruling government of hacking into them. These accusations happen mostly when the votes go to only one party even when one is casting vote to other part candidate.
Omg this is great, no doubt crypto is our feature and is growing quickly Thats why new countries using new ideas with the block chain
This is how you know crypto is the future , new countries using new ideas with the block chain
Omg this is great. I know about Agora . To see that they have been able to achieve this feat is amazing. What even promoted them to decide to use Agora? Was it politically influenced or are they just begining to accept blockchain whole heartedly.
This is interesting. The fact that it comes from a West African country makes it spectacular
thanks for sharing this, wonder who might be next?
So, how do you feel about the balance of storing biometric data for voting in blockchain and people wanting anonymity with their cryptocurrency purchases?
wow even you also donate your steem doller to the poor people.nice thats great.i saw your image.thank
Go away bot.
Different goals, different blockchains.
So, you probably won't be picking up any "Sovereign" coin from The Marshall Islands Republic, which plans on doing both with their blockchain and coin.
That's an interesting discussion. But I think it all diverges when you put "anonymity" as a pre-requisite. Maybe not every person would want that. Have you thought about it?
Or maybe there will be new mechanisms for protecting identity while still maintaining anonymity. At the end of the day, you need to know if at the other end of a transaction is a bot, or a real person, wouldn't you? So identity would be needed and identity shouldn't necessarily impact privacy.
It does seem to be a tough balance. How do you verify security without verify the human aspect of the transaction?
The "WORKAHOLIC-WITNESS" giving us up-to-date information on the happenings of the world.
Next year is Nigeria's general elections and I hope she will toe the path of the Sierra leonians.
Keep doing the good work!
Didn't realize that blockchain would be used for this so quickly. Not really that surprised though.
Wow. That's an exciting piece of news @dragosroua. I love how some of these smaller countries with far less red tape, presumably, are becoming early adopters!
Wow another innovative use of the blockchain technology.If it gets wildly adopted it could potentially put a halt to pre and post election controversies that follows every election process . Congratulations to both Sierra Leone and Agora for a successful real world application of the blockchain technology.
Real time governance is where the big change will be. But I don't think it will be a quick change. Direct democracy is not without risks. The issues politicians deal with are often very complex and not anyone can be trusted to have direct power over them. Not even Steem has direct democracy. Instead, stakeholders elect witnesses, who are experts, to run witness nodes.
such an exciting time and inspirational news! i agree with you on the waiting on the western worlds - hopefully it happens sooner than later. we could definitely use it in the US - i remember two of the past 3 elections we had to recount entire states votes because of a close call or miscount. blockchain would eliminate that!
also I'm new to steemit and someone recommended to use the steem supply tool before - so thank you so much for creating it!! its the only thing that makes sense to me in understanding how much value there actually is between all three token types and different steem piggy banks ;p
really love it!
We're beginning to experience the beginning of great things to come as a result of blockchain technology. The future is already here.
Coindesk is a well site..there have more information in fully...
@blockchain turns away our future in rural space ...Using Blockchain For Presidential Elections Is Sierra Leone keeps a great history..
i like your short post..your writing skill is so good..
follow you,sir@ dragosroua...
@upvoted @resteemit
Sierra Leone has set a precedence and am sure many more countries will follow. The fact that an African country used a block chain to conduct an election goes along way. Now am waiting for the west
No time for reading (on mobile) , but how did they manage to maintain total anonymity while keeping the votes unique?
Absolutely.. We are not far away from the day when we can say that we implement Blockchain to elect our President.
Probably next country will be Russia
Safe to say Sierra Leone have set the pace not just for the African continent but the world, I'm thinking it was a free exercise that could not be rigged and I'm satisfied. Time to catch up world
Seeing such an election is just the starting a new era that is on it way.. We will soon see politcs run all over blockchain in many parts of the world
Eh, I don't know.
Computerphile has a video about why electonic voting is a bad idea. Couldn't check it out yet, so I'm not sure what problems they mention, but do you think blockchain addresses every possible loophole?
In theory, since the block is stored on multiple nodes (computers) then it would be hard for one node to disappear and the data being lost. Or, it would also be hard for someone to change the data after the vote, if is already stored in the blockchain.
Being able to check the valid data is the issue with computer voting.
Of course, the vote tallying machines can also be hacked and take a paper ballet and record a different vote. So, as long as the paper ballot isn't destroyed immediately after the election, you have that safe guard. But, only if someone suspects wrong doing.
I will hear a presentation about Sierra Leone tomorrow so this was interesting news :)
Holy crap, that is a really cool and smart way to implement blockchain technology. This sort of thing is just what massively corrupt countries like the U.S. need :)
I had online friend from Sierra Leone who was too invested in Crypto (not by money but personality and time) so this is a great news for me!!
using past tense because I didn't speak with him for a long time, I hope he is very well and happy right now.
I can't belive what I read about blockchain and elections.
This is amazing stuff. Immutable, indisputable election results. That's got to be the future!
That will shake things up in the world of politics!
didn't expect it but its great for Blockchain, hope we will see more kind of this in the future :D
I know it's not likely; but, many are hoping for a return to the paper ballot. Even if the blockchain is used, it doesn't alleviate faux/double voting. I'm sure Sierra Leone took this into consideration.
I never thought I'd be on board with paper ballots AND the fingerprint i.d.; but, previous elections make it clear that dangling chads, and matching people with ballots, holds a little more accountability. Geez, exhausting at best. Maybe the blockchiain idea doesn't sound so bad after all.
Thanks for this post!
Peace.
Hi Dragos!
I was wondering if you received my message inviting you to the vegan discord.
https://discord.gg/D9UYmfw
that's a cool use of blockchain finally getting implemented in real life use cases