Elections on blockchain. How a poor African country riveted the attention of the whole world
Elections on blockchain — an ambitious and fresh idea, but can it guarantee honesty to the voters?
On March, 18th presidential elections took place in Russia. As was expected, Vladimir Putin was named thewinner. But it was far from being the most interesting news for the cryptocommunity. Much more interest was aroused by the elections in one of the poorest countries of the world in Western Africa.
What Sierra Leone is famous for
In 2014–2015 the whole world talked about Sierra Leone because of the storming Ebola virus, the damage from which is estimated at 1,4 billion dollars.
Now the world is talking about Sierra Leone because of the first-ever presidential elections on blockchain.
After the expiration of Ernest Bai Koroma’s two presidential terms 16 candidates applied for the president`s chair. In the first round no one managed to earn the necessary percentage of votes (55 %), so the final results will be known only after the second round of the elections on March, 27th.
How did the elections on blockchain pass?
By the way, the blockchain technology was not applied in the whole territory of Sierra Leone, but only in the western, most occupied part of the country. To be more exact, the blockchain technology was utilized to verify the submitted votes.
The application for voting was developed by a Swiss firm Agora. The information from every submitted paper ballot was registered in a blockchain. It, according to the developers, was supposed to provide honesty and transparency of the elections.
Unlike cryptocurrencies, the application works with a private (proprietary) blockchain. That is, the right to modify the register is only granted to the authorized bodies. In Sierra Leone such rights were possessed by the international organizations — the Red Cross, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the University of Freiburg. The others could act only as observers and watch the process in the “read-only” mode.
Fair elections on blockchain
The decision to use blockchain in elections was caused by a high level of mistrust of the population towards elections. A distinctive feature of Sierra Leone and the reason of its political instability is that tribal and clan traditions are still strong in the country, and the electorate is divided on the basis of loyalty to this or that tribe. Accordingly, a clan or a tribe, whose candidate lost, accuses the tribe of winners of falsification.
By means of the blockchain technology Europeans wished to “reconcile” conflicting tribes.
It is difficult to judge just how fair the first elections on blockchain were. The results of the first round are published on the site of Agora. The majority of votes were received by the Samura Kamara —party fellow (All Peoples Congress) and probably tribesman (Temne) of the former president. He had to get only half a percent of votes more for a full victory. Candidate Julius Bio came second — he gained slightly more than 32%.
The final results of the elections will be summed up on March, 27th. But will the tribes and clans of Sierra Leone believe in their honesty?
Elections on blockchain in Russia
On March, 18th the chairman of the Russia’s Central Election Commission Ella Pamfilova declared that the presidential elections of 2024 in Russia can be arranged with the help of the blockchain technology.
“Perhaps, the following elections will be held on the basis of blockchain”, — Pamfilova`s words as quoted by TASS.
The development of the application for elections in Russia was begun at the end of last year by the company “Kaspersky Lab”. The beta version of the voting app Polys on the Ethereum blockchain was presented in November 2017 in Dublin.
At the moment the application supports two types of voting:
- Majority, when the victory is gained by the candidate chosen by most people.
- Cumulative, when every voter can cast a vote for one candidate several times or distribute votes between several persons.
With Polys, it is possible to choose different variants of accepting votes:
- Via email (the voter receives an email with a protected link for voting)
- A unique code (makes a combination of online and offline voting possible by means of special “public computers”)
- In the form of public voting (the link for voting is accessible to everybody)
The Polys app should guarantee anonymity of voters, protect from fake votes and be open, so that every voter can be convinced that his vote is added to the register. However, there cannot be completely open elections on blockchain because of the Russian laws — it is impossible to publish intermediate results of elections before the official disclosure.
The use of the blockchain technology in elections is something that requires serious improvement on the part of legislators, lawyers and developers. Probably, in the future blockchain will guarantee honesty and openness of political processes in the world, but for now this technology can hardly fit (can`t fit) in the existing realities.
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