I had the immense honor of being asked to consult the United Nations technical advisor to Africa on the 2018 Sierra Leone election.
Every election is incredibly costly, in the U.S. we actually don't know how expensive it actually is but our election run in the billions of dollars to operate. In a region of the world that has a history of contentious elections, and the UN has to spend millions sending peace keepers to oversee those elections and protect voters, its clear to see how blockchain could help.
As paper-votes were cast many of them were recorded on-chain. This may have been a relatively small proof of concept for blockchain voting, but at the time it was a huge win for the industry. I still mark the hours and long nights I spent discussing plans for the election among the coolest things I've ever had the privilege of doing.
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And look I will clarify because there was crazy backlash due to uninformed and misleading PR stunts by one of the companies involved. This WAS NOT and was never intended to be a fully blockchain run election, it was educational in nature for the local governments in hopes of building trust in the technology.
If you can accept that, then you'll realize a big step was made for the industry, and I still believe there is hope for saving the governments around the world billions of dollars every year with blockchain voting.
It's one step at a time, and it was awesome to be a part of this step.
Every election is incredibly costly, in the U.S. we actually don't know how expensive it actually is but our election run in the billions of dollars to operate. In a region of the world that has a history of contentious elections, and the UN has to spend millions sending peace keepers to oversee those elections and protect voters, its clear to see how blockchain could help.
As paper-votes were cast many of them were recorded on-chain. This may have been a relatively small proof of concept for blockchain voting, but at the time it was a huge win for the industry. I still mark the hours and long nights I spent discussing plans for the election among the coolest things I've ever had the privilege of doing.
-
And look I will clarify because there was crazy backlash due to uninformed and misleading PR stunts by one of the companies involved. This WAS NOT and was never intended to be a fully blockchain run election, it was educational in nature for the local governments in hopes of building trust in the technology.
If you can accept that, then you'll realize a big step was made for the industry, and I still believe there is hope for saving the governments around the world billions of dollars every year with blockchain voting.
It's one step at a time, and it was awesome to be a part of this step.
