Blockchain technology for elections? In Sierra Leone it happened this week

The African state of Sierra Leone has used blockchain technology for the stripping of the presidential elections on March 7th. The CEO of Agora , Leonardo Gammar, the Swiss company to which the state has applied for technological and tenacious support for operations, highlights the event. The government of Sierra Leone wanted to use blockchain technology to "increase transparency in electoral operations".

"For the first time in history, a blockchain was used in a presidential election," commented Jaron Lukasiweicz, COO of Agora. The company has implemented a private permissioned blockchain, whose fundamental difference from a public blockchain is represented by the fact that interaction and access is allowed only to operators who have been assigned the appropriate permissions in advance.
"The voters express their choice on paper forms, so our team of impartial observers registers them on the blockchain," explained Lukasiewicz. The use of blockchain technology has allowed the counting of votes to be obtained two hours in advance of the official count conducted by the National Electoral Commission.

Agora has implemented a private permissioned blockchain - which differs from a public blockchain because there are restrictions on who can interact on the blockchain network - to supervise the results of the election in real time and ensure that there is no corruption in the democratic process. "The voters make their choice on paper forms, and so our team of impartial observers registers them on the blockchain," explained Lukasiewicz. At the base of the system there are "write-permissioned" nodes operated by Agora and by third-party witnesses made up of members of the Red Cross, the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne and the University of Friborg, and read-only nodes that allow anyone to observe the data.

The benefits of using blockchain technology in electoral operations lie not only in cost reductions, but also in the further reduction of human error and a quicker understanding of election results. According to Agora, in the future all elections will use blockchain-based voting systems as it represents, according to the company, the only technology available today that can offer a transparent platform for the verification of voting and counting operations.