Sierra Leona holds first ever Blockchain powered elections.

On March 7th history was made as Sierra Leona held the first ever blockchain powered elections.Lack of transparency is an on-going issue in elections around the world and particularly in many African countries where there is a consistent suspicion of manipulation of votes that often leads to polling center violence. It is hoped that blockchain can provide a more transparent system that can help restore and maintain trust.Voters traditionally used paper ballots that were cast at polling stations but these were then manually recorded using a permissioned blockchain. Public blockchains, like those that support Bitcoin and other crypoto-currencies can be validated by anyone whereas a permissioned blockchain only allows authorized persons to validate transactions. Over time, Agora a Swiss startup that helped oversee the results of Sierra Leone’s presidential election hopes to be able to deploy solutions that will automate the entire electoral process with citizens voting electronically using biometric identification and personalized cryptographic keys while the votes, in turn, are validated by blockchain. Blockchain-powered electronic voting will be cheaper for African countries by cutting out the printing cost of paper-based elections but perhaps, more importantly, vastly reduce electoral violence. “If we can do it in Sierra Leone, we can do it everywhere else,” concluded Leonardo Gammar, CEO of Agora. (Source: Asia Times). Blockchain is certainly a game changer on a global scale. I personally would like to see blockchain also being used to validate government spending to avoid unnecessary spending by the government and most importantly to spot corruption at an early stage. Comment on your thoughts of how blockchain can be used to make a difference.