Slashdot Mirror
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
Instant election results, that can be verified by everyone. If the voting machine spits out a randomized unique identifier the voter could then go in and view the blockchain and confirm their votes were cast as they actually selected.
If the voting machines were setup like those used in the US where election workers checked your voter registration and that you hadn't already voted, and then you just walked up to any random available machine, cast your vote, and then it spit out a receipt with your unique id in a QR code and ascii format, there would be no way to link votes to voters other than snatching their receipt out of their hands as they left.
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.
"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"
It is right in the article. Immutably record ballots and results. Whether currency or votes, someone did say it.
Immutable - not capable of or susceptible to change.
Why the fuck would any government brag about cheap elections. I want a government to brag about good elections. Paper ballots, made by people and counted by people, with representatives from each person running for the election checking the vote counting process. I want voting to be on weekends to be more accessible to more people. I want lots of polling stations and short queues. I want a web site with all candidates listed, the substantiated scholastic record, the employment history and their political history on show, with promises of what they will work for on show and contractually signed with penalties for failing, don't make promises you can keep or wont even try to keep. I want all those who run for election tested, their IQ, their knowledge and their psychology including a test for psychopathy and that available online. Then elections will be guaranteed to be a whole lot more fair and you will have a much greater chance of getting what you are paying for. Voting is about people and not about machines.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Who even says that currency blockchains CANNOT be manipulated? What if the creator(s) of Bitcoin and so forth can pull hundreds of millions of dollars out of the blockchain they have created, but the blockchain appears "intact" when examined?
No need to do that -- Bitcoin mining is progressively more difficult / slower the more bitcoin exist in the system. There's no need for a backdoor for the creators to syphon off coins after fact, they could very easily crank out a ton of coin on 'easy' mode before even releasing it to the world. It's already front-loaded, so why would they even risk adding a backdoor that could be discovered?
The creator(s) of Bitcoin mined the coins when it was easy/cheap. They have billions of USD worth of bitcoin. They don't need to cheat, they can just start cashing it out.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Ah ok, so idiots does exists is what you say, well I can not argue against that.
That's something I'm wondering about. In bitcoin, manipulation is made hard as long as no cooperating entity represents more than 50% of all mining. That only works because the process of minting a coin takes a not-trivial amount of CPU cycles.
When all of the machines are owned by the same entity and the proof of work is reduced to a level that allows all of the coins to be minted on election day, I'm not so sure it still works.
Agora's Whitepaper
Agora's Github Repo
I have to applaud the summary for calling it a ledger, because that’s what blockchain is, nothing magical or mysterious to it. Immutable? Even if it were, it still doesn’t matter. Not if you cannot ensure that the numbers entered into the ledger are actually correct. Voting requires a human chain of custody from ballot to results, with any human smart enough to count being able to oversee or verify the voting and counting process.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Population:
6,163,195 (July 2017 est.)
Languages:
English (official, regular use limited to literate minority), Mende (principal vernacular in the south), Temne (principal vernacular in the north), Krio (English-based Creole, spoken by the descendants of freed Jamaican slaves who were settled in the Freetown area, a lingua franca and a first language for 10% of the population but understood by 95%)
Religions:
Muslim 78.6%, Christian 20.8%, other 0.3%, unspecified 0.2% (2013 est.)
Sanitation facility access:
improved:
urban: 22.8% of the population
rural: 6.9% of the population
total: 13.3% of population
Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write English, Mende, Temne, or Arabic
total population: 48.1%
male: 58.7%
female: 37.7% (2015 est.)
Who sold this shitsplat country blockchain idea?
I bet there is a Bitmain ASIC running it!
Immutable - not capable of or susceptible to change.
So, once the bad information enters the system, there's no way to correct it.
- Who runs the nodes of the blockchain?
- Agora's whitepaper says that you vote remotely from your phone. Is that the only mechanism for voting? Can the voting be done at a poll booth? If so, is there a voting machine which transfers the vote to the blockchain? What prevents the fraud from happening before the vote is transferred to the blockchain?
- Voting remotely means that secret ballot is not guaranteed. If someone threatens or bribes you to vote for a particular party/candidate & the voting is done at a booth, then they will never know who you actually voted for. However if voting is possible remotely, then this secret ballot is not guaranteed - this is the same for vote by phone or vote by mail or any such thing. The person threatening or bribing you can be by your side when you vote.
Ballot box stuffing is the simplest and most wide-spread form of election fraud. With internet connected machines giving real-time results the government could flip on a piece of hidden code on the machines to electronically stuff the boxes right under the noses of election observers. The government just wanted to get rid of those pesky paper records while pretending that the elections are even more secure because of the magical blockchain ledger
With Bitcoin, you're validating transactions. For this distributed ledger of voting, you are only recording each vote and hopefully not transferring votes between wallets.
Yes, you're recording different facts into the ledger, but that doesn't change the need for the ledger to be immutable.