Sierra Leone ran the world’s first blockchain-based election

Ensuring trouble-free election in democratic nations where everyone is entitled to a single vote in the selection of a country’s leader, represents a major challenge, even as dire as the consequences of election fraud can be. Many figures may be involved in voter fraud control, such as vote-counting managers, polling station managers, law enforcement personnel, […]

Ensuring trouble-free election in democratic nations where everyone is entitled to a single vote in the selection of a country’s leader, represents a major challenge, even as dire as the consequences of election fraud can be. Many figures may be involved in voter fraud control, such as vote-counting managers, polling station managers, law enforcement personnel, and the integrity of the equipment and voting supplies used. 

Online voting has stepped in, with the promise of helping to solve voting problems. Digital voting pertains to the use of electronic devices to cast votes. The terminology “e-voting” seems to refer to voting via a machine located in some polling station, while “i-voting” involves the use of a browser. However, issues remain, such as the control of the online platform, ensuring that votes are counted correctly, guaranteeing that the system is available for the entire duration of an election, verifying the votes, and dealing with malicious software and hackers.

Perhaps the first country in the world to allow online voting is Estonia, who deployed electronic voting in 2007. In 2015, almost a third of the parliamentary elections in that country were based on i-voting. The basic requirement of the country’s system is the national ID card. The card contains encrypted personal data of voters. In order to vote, you enter your card into a card reader and then access the voting website on a connected computer, with a PIN to help with authentication. You could use a mobile phone to identify yourself for i-voting if you do not have a card reader for your computer. A cast vote is sent through a publicly-accessible server to a vote-storage server where your vote is encrypted and stored until the online voting period is over. The vote is then stripped of information that could potentially be used to identify you, and then transferred via a storage disk to a stand-alone vote-counting server, where your vote is decrypted and counted. 

There have been subsequent i-voting deployments elsewhere, such as in Norway and New South Wales. However, some risks have been identified with i-voting, such as the possibility of malware, on the client device, that is able to monitor and change your vote. This is where the Blockchain concept, which is virtually tamper-proof, comes in. This column has previously written on the basics of the Blockchain technology, as in the articles on the 14 and 21 August 2017 in Daily Trust. The Bitcoin is the first application of the Blockchain technology.

Blockchain is an ordered data structure that contains blocks of transactions. The encrypted information (called a “hash”) of a new voter and the immediate previous voter, is, together with the new vote, stored in a new block. (That is, each block in the stack (blockchain) is identified by the hash on its header.) Computers in the network are randomly selected to authenticate the most recent transaction (voting), a procedure that is analogous to minting in the case of Bitcoin. After it has been authenticated, the new block is added to the chain of blocks (or blockchain). The next transaction (or voting event) will, in turn, trigger the generation of a hash and authentication, with this process continuing until all the eligible voters have cast their votes. 

You can see from the foregoing that each block header contains information that links the block to its previous block in the chain, creating a chain that is linked to the very first (foundation) block. In this manner, the number of blocks will be equal to the number of voters plus one (for the foundation of the stack).

One security feature enforced by the rules in the blockchain operating system is worth noting. If an unruly computer in the network attempts to alter an entry in the blockchain, this will force the altering of every subsequent entry, as a consequence of the cascading nature of block formation, as described above. Otherwise, the digital signatures embedded in the data will show a mismatch. This alteration cannot be allowed unless all people running the connected computers in the network accept or ignore the mismatch. Note that a (voting) transaction must be authenticated before a new one can be processed!

The Switzerland-based Blockchain startup, Agora, was the brain behind the deployment in the 7 March 2018 Sierra Leone presidential election. The winner of the election will succeed President Ernest Bai Koroma, who has run the country for a decade. There is no winner yet, as neither of the candidates in the first round achieved the 55% of the ballot required to take office. The presidential run-off election is on 27 March 2018.

To be sure, although Agora was accredited by Sierra Leone’s National Election Committee (NEC), the blockchain-based process did not count all the ballots; as only the heavily populated districts, in the environs of the capital city, Freetown, were covered. That is, NEC’s tally is the official result. So, in a sense, Agora has participated as an accredited observer that is providing independent results for comparison purposes.  For me, I would vote for anything that enhances elections that are fair and square.