Blockchain has certainly disrupted a series of industries and all applications of the technology are quite impressive. Now, comes Sierra Leone and what many think one of the biggest milestones in the voting system and the technology world.
Amidst a high-profile election season, to replace outgoing president Ernest Bai Koroma, a Swiss voting tech company called Agora has integrated around 400,000 ballots on its blockchain-based voting system.
Since Sierra Leone has so many candidates and the competition for places is tight, the new blockchain-based system not only allows for transparent results, but also allows for vital data such as breakdown of votes to be supplied to the election committees.
One issue, however, with all voting systems is the security issue. The company that designed the voting system, Agora, says that the voting system through the blockchain technology is absolutely protected, and hence, voters need not worry about any security-related problems.
The CEO of Agora expressed his positive hopes that the new way of casting your vote will present many opportunities in the future for growing the blockchain-based voting scheme. He hopes that he results from Sierra Leone will help Agora expand its blockchain voting systems around the world. Other startups like Polys and Voatz are aiming to do the same, reported PCMag. While the process may take some time, critical steps are already taken to ensure that citizens feel comfortable with the fully automated system.
The innovation in Sierra Leone’s voting system only shows that the decentralization in the political system, even on a more basic level, is not far away. By establishing an automated, blockchain-based method of voting, one can prevent hacking of data, corruption and the government from spending a lot of money on different ways to improve the voting procedures around the world.
Just when we imagine that Sierra Leone was one of the countries where the voting system and procedures involved hundreds of people for counting the votes and huge corruption, the integration of blockchain into the country’s political system and freedom of people only enhance the image of blockchain as the “Third Big Revolution” in the modern world.