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Sierra Leone Government Denies the Role of Blockchain In Its Recent Election (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the jump-the-gun dept.

The National Electoral Commission Sierra Leone is denying the news that theirs was one of the first elections recorded to the blockchain. "While the blockchain voting company Agora claimed to have run the first blockchain-based election, it appears that the company did little more than observe the voting and store some of the results," reports TechCrunch. From the report: "The NEC [National Electoral Commission] has not used and is not using blockchain technology in any part of the electoral process," said NEC head Mohamed Conteh. Why he is adamant about this fact is unclear -- questions I asked went unanswered -- but he and his team have created a set of machine readable election results and posted [a] clarification. "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 Agora's Leonardo Gammar. "This is the first time a government election is using blockchain technology." In Africa the reactions were mixed. "It would be like me showing up to the UK election with my computer and saying, 'let me enter your counting room, let me plug-in and count your results,'" said Morris Marah to RFI. "Agora's results for the two districts they tallied differed considerably from the official results, according to an analysis of the two sets of statistics carried out by RFI," wrote RFI's Daniel Finnan.

20 comments

  1. "Blockchain" Anything you want to tie it to! by oldgraybeard · · Score: 2

    Anytime I see "Blockchain" I read a bit of it and usually think SCAM and I'm gone. Just my 2 cents ;)

    1. Re:"Blockchain" Anything you want to tie it to! by Riceballsan · · Score: 1

      Blockchain is a great technology for securing and decentralizing information. But yes it's become a buzzword of stupidity. Think of it like cloud was a decade or so ago. Yes it is a hypothetically game changing ability... but yes every idiot and their grandma is looking to throw either the technology or sometimes just the word to everything whether it is or isn't anything.

    2. Re:"Blockchain" Anything you want to tie it to! by wiretrip · · Score: 1

      "Blockchain is a great technology for securing and decentralizing information." Actually, it's not since it doesn't scale and has huge energy waste built into its design. Things like Tangle/DAG look much more promising.

  2. Election Observation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would be like me showing up to the UK election with my computer and saying, 'let me enter your counting room, let me plug-in and count your results,'" said Morris Marah to RFI.

    They are called election observers, Mr. Marah. We do it all the time here, at the north of Sahara.

  3. This is why this is needed by jwymanm · · Score: 1

    "Agora's results for the two districts they tallied differed considerably from the official results, according to an analysis of the two sets of statistics carried out by RFI," These elections all over the world are not verifiable other than by the group responsible for tallying them. Obviously blockchain results can be faked in the counting process as well but if you used an opensource verified app (signed and distributed from 3rd party) you could deliver a reliable election result.

    1. Re:This is why this is needed by hibiki_r · · Score: 2

      No you can't, as there are a million attack vectors, both digital an physical, for someone that is willing to blatantly mess with election results. I can invent bonus voters, make people think they voted, but ultimately have their votes thrown away in a variety of ways, MITM vote handshakes manipulating voting machines... and really, people that are willing to make such election manipulation can just make sure that the opponents that can win are just not in the ballot in the first place.

      When one is afraid of election fraud, the weakness of the actual mechanisms used aren't really the problem.

    2. Re:This is why this is needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can do all those things with paper ballets too.

    3. Re:This is why this is needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes but the means to verify that the process in a paper ballot is being done in a right way are accesible to the most of the population. Essentially you'll only need to know how to count. Also because there are so many people participating in the process doing fraud in significant levels means convincing so many people that the fraud then becomes evident. (People is really bad keeping secrets)

      With blockchain and full electronic elections you are putting your thrust in the people that designs and programs the system. That means that the pool of people capable of verify the process is reduced. It's more easy to bribe/threat/convince a small pool of people than convince thousands of people needed to make fraud in traditional paper ballots.

      And that's the key issue. A well designed paper ballot election is based on the fact that you cannot trust anyone and usually a well designed election system puts so many people in every step of the process that fraud is possible but hard to do at great scale without leaving evidence. Electronic ballots implies that you must trust the system and nothing else and detect fraud is hard because 99% of the population is not capable of verify by themselves the inner working of the system.

    4. Re:This is why this is needed by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      You want a place that barely has electricity to run the government on blockchain?

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    5. Re:This is why this is needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blockchain did not find this difference, it was discovered due to being counted more than once (which is something every other democracy already does, the votes are counted first at each polling station to get a preliminary result and then all votes are sent up to the election authority who does a final counting in order to get the final result). No one voted with a machine, the votes in the blockchain was input as people counted the votes so this discrepancy can be both that the counting people counted wrongly or that the people who inserted the value into the blockchain inserted them wrongly.

      The "These elections all over the world are not verifiable other than by the group responsible for tallying them." quote is blatantly false. First counting in the country where I live is done by volunteers from all parties and you as a citizen can stay and observe the entire process. The second and final counting is done by the election authority. So each vote is counted at least twice by different groups.

  4. PR stunt by psnyder · · Score: 1

    From the article: "Was Agora simply attempting a PR stunt in support of its upcoming token sale."

    No question mark used. Just a period. Wasn't much of a question anyway.

    1. Re:PR stunt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agora is the name of a darknet market that pulled an exit scam. Coincidence?

  5. Treason, Obstruction of Justice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You vote for Moscow Donald, Yes comrade traitor?

    1. Re:Treason, Obstruction of Justice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I'm wondering about is who's RFI

  6. Caught my neightbour's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cat pooping in my front yard. When confronted it denied the role of blockchain in the recent events.

  7. He did record the election results by mapkinase · · Score: 1

    I do not know what Sierra Leone government officials are smoking. Maybe they should stop smoking weed and start to worry about Chinese takeover of their country.

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  8. More unfounded media hype. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's becoming tiresome.