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Sierra Leone Records World's First Blockchain-Powered Election (techcrunch.com)
The citizens of Sierra Leone went to the polls on March 7 but this time something was different: the country recorded votes at 70% of the polling to the blockchain using a technology that is the first of its kind in actual practice. The tech, created by Leonardo Gammar of Agora, anonymously stored votes in an immutable ledger, thereby offering instant access to the election results. TechCrunch reports: "Anonymized votes/ballots are being recorded on Agora's blockchain, which will be publicly available for any interested party to review, count and validate," said Gammar. "This is the first time a government election is using blockchain technology." "Sierra Leone wishes to create an environment of trust with the voters in a contentious election, especially looking at how the election will be publicly viewed post-election. By using blockchain as a means to immutably record ballots and results, the country hopes to create legitimacy around the election and reduce fall-out from opposition parties," he said.
Why is this interesting? While this is little more than a proof of concept -- it is not a complete voting record but instead captured a seemingly acceptable plurality of votes -- it's fascinating to see the technology be implemented in Sierra Leone, a country of about 7.4 million people. The goal ultimately is to reduce voting costs by cutting out paper ballots as well as reducing corruption in the voting process.
Why is this interesting? While this is little more than a proof of concept -- it is not a complete voting record but instead captured a seemingly acceptable plurality of votes -- it's fascinating to see the technology be implemented in Sierra Leone, a country of about 7.4 million people. The goal ultimately is to reduce voting costs by cutting out paper ballots as well as reducing corruption in the voting process.
Now, tell us how this is supposed to be better than a paper ballot.... idiots
No one is saying that currency blockchains cannot be manipulated. It's well known that cryptocurrencies are open to manipulation if any one party controls more than 50% of the miners. And with this particular blockchain the Sierra Leone government controls 100% of the miners, what could go wrong...
If the blockchain can be manipulated, it hasn't been proven yet. And even with bitcoin not being worth what it was back in december, it is still worth enough to entice someone looking to make an easy buck to find a way to manipulate it.
I would say considering the stakes at play, if someone hasn't found a way to manipulate the bitcoin blockchain by now, it is likely pretty damn secure. That't the whole reason bitcoin "mining" takes up 10% of a particular city's power. The point of "mining" isn't generating coins. The mining is doing validations on the transactions and blockchain. The bitcoin that is "mined" is pretty much generated out of thin air as a reward for the computing power of validating transactions and the chain.
When you are up against likely petahashes of compute power world wide doing validating, its likely a slim chance in hell you are going to be able to manipulate anything.
And if they implemented it that way then they would have opened the floodgates for violent spouses, evil employers and other people with power (either by buying votes outright for cash or by threatening with violence) to force people to vote a specific way. This cannot happen in a normal paper ballot scheme since they have no way to control that you actually voted in the way that they expected you to but if the vote can be verified like in your example then this all of the suddenly works like a charm.