
Sierra Leone government denies the role of blockchain in its recent election - portofcall
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/sierra-leone-government-denies-the-role-of-blockchain-in-its-recent-election/
======
yongjik
Well, good, because I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to run an election
using blockchain.

Paper ballots with automated scanners is a solved problem. It works, it's
cheap, and it's virtually tamper-proof. (Tampering with the result will
require physical access by many people: if you allow that possibility you're
basically conceding that you cannot trust the government to run the election
properly, and using any technology won't save you.)

In other words, paper ballots is a boring, unsexy technology whose only
benefit is that it works. No wonder people aren't excited.

~~~
hmcdona1
What? I agree it works, but it's pretty insecure. Paper ballots can just be
swapped out for other paper ballots. With a public blockchain (or something
like it) you could always look up your vote and by nature it cannot be
changed. The vote count could be tallied instantly as well and recounts are
unnecessary.

Blockchains can't ensure no false votes are cast for deceased or unwilling
participants, but it honestly would be better than paper in many ways. I am
not advocating people use some third party token to do this. That I believe
would be unnecessary. Am I missing something though? I don't understand the
overwhelming hatred any blockchain related tech gets on HN. This is one area
where I think it could provide real value.

~~~
yongjik
> With a public blockchain (or something like it) you could always look up
> your vote and by nature it cannot be changed.

So all you have to do is to set up a fake website advertising "Look up if your
vote is counted as it should be", let people type in their credentials, and
you now know exactly how millions of people have voted.

Paper ballots work because it's dead simple. Your ballot goes into a box,
multiple eyeballs from multiple parties continuously watch the box, and then
the box is opened and everything in it is counted, with no way to connect each
ballot to individual voters. That you cannot "look up your vote" later is not
a bug: it's a feature.

~~~
3solarmasses
Look up zero-knowledge proofs. Solves this problem. Blockchain is the only
legitimate way to carry out voting, imo.

~~~
arthur_pryor
zero knowledge proofs fail to address this concern:

> all you have to do is to set up a fake website advertising "Look up if your
> vote is counted as it should be", let people type in their credentials, and
> you now know exactly how millions of people have voted.

this is a social engineering problem, not a cryptography problem. said social
engineering would be much harder to implement with paper ballots than a system
that's available over the internet.

further, your reply does not address this concern:

> That you cannot "look up your vote" later is not a bug: it's a feature.

i should not be able to verifiably let another party know how i voted. to use
your own rhetorical device, i'd suggest you look up vote selling and voter
coercion.

>>>> Paper ballots with automated scanners is a solved problem. It works, it's
cheap, and it's virtually tamper-proof. (Tampering with the result will
require physical access by many people: if you allow that possibility you're
basically conceding that you cannot trust the government to run the election
properly, and using any technology won't save you.)

>>>> In other words, paper ballots is a boring, unsexy technology whose only
benefit is that it works. No wonder people aren't excited.

> Blockchain is the only legitimate way to carry out voting, imo.

you'll have to forgive me if i'm still unconvinced.

------
dwighttk
The original story wasn't very clear how blockchain was involved. It seems
very likely now with the NEC denying the claims that it was a bunch of hype.

>“Agora’s results for the two districts they tallied differed considerably
from the official results, according to an analysis of the two sets of
statistics carried out by RFI,”

>Was Agora simply attempting a PR stunt in support of its upcoming token sale.

almost certainly

~~~
GenericsMotors
> The original story wasn't very clear how blockchain was involved.

Didn't stop the ridiculously titled _" Sierra Leone just ran the first
blockchain-based election"_[1] from being shared and strongly upvoted here on
HN.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16622245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16622245)

~~~
danso
You're linking to _this_ thread; I think you mean to link to this one, which
has 500+ upvotes:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16598210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16598210)

~~~
GenericsMotors
Thanks, my mistake (and apparently too late to edit my original comment).

------
beat
I have yet to see how blockchain is supposed to solve problems with elections
that can't be solved with good process. And if process isn't fixed, I don't
see how blockchain alone will get around the process shortcomings.

Elections are no different than any other info security problem. Multiple
checks at multiple locations in the process. Blockchain is not magic pixie
dust that makes info security issues go away.

~~~
darawk
> I have yet to see how blockchain is supposed to solve problems with
> elections that can't be solved with good process. And if process isn't
> fixed, I don't see how blockchain alone will get around the process
> shortcomings.

Blockchains provide a verifiably immutable log. This is the exact primitive
you want for elections - tamper-proof logging. It is genuinely a good
technological solution to the problems of election legitimacy and validation.
That isn't a defense of this article, or of any of the current
blockchain/election projects, but in principle, the idea makes sense.

~~~
skywhopper
That’s honestly the smallest part of election validation. How do you know
everything was recorded to the log correctly or at all? In other words, the
actual “election” part where you verify voters and collect results, which has
nothing to do with blockchain. But even if that is all done right, how is the
blockchain itself being run? Blockchain data is only as trustworthy as the
systems doing the verification. A centralized blockchain is no more
trustworthy than a centralized database of any kind. And a distributed
blockchain has its own attack vectors. Rubbing blockchain on it is not a
security solution.

~~~
hmcdona1
If I am given a voterID, let's say an address from which I cast my vote. I can
look at my vote on the chain to ensure it was cast correctly forever from that
point forward. The node software would ideally be open source and publicly
available. A full node could be run at each voting site, and potentially by
citizens themselves even. You could run one to make the voting process even
more secure.

A decentralized blockchain is far more trustworthy than a centralized database
in this scenario. Say Russia controls the centralized voting database, they
can just edit whatever value they want to say "Putin" and call it a day. It's
not public. No one can verify their vote. It's under the control of one party.
The entire point of decentralization is to ensure there is public consensus
among multiple parties.

There are other discussions about how to allow or incentivize citizens to run
nodes, mitigate lost or stolen IDs/private keys, prevent against spam attacks,
etc...but it sounds like you aren't even open to discussing those because you
equate the word "blockchain" with "snake oil".

~~~
marksomnian
> I can look at my vote on the chain

And now you've told everyone exactly how millions of citizens voted.

------
apo
Beware of Blockchain stories with unsubstantiated facts. The original story
had many red flags, not the least of which being the use of the future tense
in a quote by Gammar.

 _“Anonymized votes /ballots are being recorded on Agora’s blockchain, which
will be publicly available for any interested party to review, count and
validate,” said Gammar._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16598210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16598210)

The space is littered with claims like this that turn out to be nonsense.
Don't trust, verify.

------
CryptoPunk
Quite a different story from what the Agora team were telling:

[https://np.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/83v7x9/these_resul...](https://np.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/83v7x9/these_results_represent_the_first_time_a/dvl5f1y/)

~~~
danso
Here's a more relevant response, in which they comment on someone's submission
of this article that disputes the use of blockchain in Sierra Leone:

[http://en.rfi.fr/africa/20180319-sierra-leones-electoral-
com...](http://en.rfi.fr/africa/20180319-sierra-leones-electoral-commission-
distances-itself-use-blockchain-during-polls)

[https://np.reddit.com/r/agora/comments/85k6cx/sierra_leones_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/agora/comments/85k6cx/sierra_leones_electoral_commission_distances/)

Agora makes zero attempt to rebut the claims with evidence, and instead,
attack the source:

> _Through research we have found that username "Tamba Lamin", who is the main
> source of this article, is from a competing service. You can do your own
> research into his position by Googling the username and "election". We do
> our part to not incite witch-hunts or dox users so please do not either but
> he used his real name on our channels and we have no other way to reference
> it._

The article by Tamba Lamin is just one of more than a dozen articles listed in
the cited post that argue against Agora. This is not a great response from the
Agora team (posted below for posterity):

 _Hi /u/custom1made, we welcome both positive and negative feedback on our
company so we can continue to learn, earn trust, and grow.

Our continued success will attract many unsavory characters that will attack
us - we must remain professional, honest, and composed - and hope to foster a
community that agrees to that mantra.

We are very much hoping you will do your part in helping us stay strong so we
can focus on our mission to bring transparent Democracy to the world.

Through research we have found that username "Tamba Lamin", who is the main
source of this article, is from a competing service. You can do your own
research into his position by Googling the username and "election". We do our
part to not incite witch-hunts or dox users so please do not either but he
used his real name on our channels and we have no other way to reference it.

Although his motives may have been questionable, he brought up important
topics. We had an internal meeting about our stance on sensational subject
titles, filters in place, and how we will handle incorrect information from
third-party news organizations. Our intent is to set and keep the record
straight.

As stated in our pinned posts and in all of our Reddit posts, we do not verify
the accuracy of third-party news reports. Thank you._

~~~
notahacker
Companies which double down on lying PR by personally attacking people
correcting it (not even accurately apparently, given no evidence to suggest
Tamba Lamin has any connection with French media reporting quotes from
election officials) should not be _anywhere_ near election counting.

------
danso
If it's the case that Sierra Leone did not use blockchain for any part of its
election, I think TechCrunch needs to own up to its reporting, which seems
very thinly sourced:

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/sierra-leone-just-ran-
the-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/sierra-leone-just-ran-the-first-
blockchain-based-election/)

In fact, it seems completely sourced to "Leonardo Gammar of Agora", "Agora"
being a company that is trying to sell its "blockchain-based digital voting
solution" [0] and thus has every incentive to hype the usage of their product.
The TC reporter apparently made no attempt to contact anyone who actually
works in Sierra Leone's government/elections, or anyone who actually lives
there.

[0] [https://agora.vote/#about](https://agora.vote/#about)

edit: looks like the reporter has just decided to reach out to authorities:

[https://twitter.com/johnbiggs/status/975841632661786624](https://twitter.com/johnbiggs/status/975841632661786624)

[https://twitter.com/johnbiggs/status/975814093994151938](https://twitter.com/johnbiggs/status/975814093994151938)

Quartz also wrote about Sierra Leone's alleged use of blockchain, and like TC,
solely sources it to Agora: [https://qz.com/1227050/sierra-leone-elections-
powered-by-blo...](https://qz.com/1227050/sierra-leone-elections-powered-by-
blockchain/)

It does link to this page though, from Agora:

[https://agora.vote/sierraleone2018/](https://agora.vote/sierraleone2018/)

It is possible that Agora was accredited as an independent observer of
results. But it's problematic that they use their Sierra Leone results page to
advertise their services, which don't seem to have been used as described:

> _Agora is a Swiss foundation providing decentralized digital voting systems
> based on the blockchain technology. Agora’s solution will enable secure and
> remote voting from digital devices, as well as allow each voter to verify
> his or her untampered vote in the final count._

When you go to Agora's "results" page, all you get is an aggregated tally of
votes. I don't see a ledger of any kind:

[https://agora.vote/sierraleone2018/results](https://agora.vote/sierraleone2018/results)

------
shpx
[https://youtu.be/ZDnShu5V99s?t=22m46s](https://youtu.be/ZDnShu5V99s?t=22m46s)
is a good lecture about the cryptography of electronic voting.

------
microtherion
Sierra Leone missed an opportunity here to embrace the hype and declare itself
"The Crypto Jungle".

------
Sangermaine
Hard to believe unverified hype or outright deception is involved in something
relating to blockchain technology.

~~~
jacques_chester
Luckily, I have the answer: a blockchain which records overhyped blockchains.
This technology will make it possible to create an immutable, universal record
that will exclude all falsehood.

ICO imminent. Act now and receive a 20% bonus on your next overpromise.

------
mozumder
Good, because blockchain for elections is a TERRIBLE idea.

A large state can hack election results just by having millions of computers
perform blockchain proof-of-work on false election data.

~~~
popol12
That's not true at all. The worst the state can do is to deny votes to be
written in the blockchain by mining empty blocks. But no matter how much
computing power it has, the state can't write false votes, thanks to public
key cryptography. If transactions where cheaper, voting on a public blockchain
like Bitcoin would be a great thing. That's not the case today, but I'm pretty
sure it will be in the coming years.

~~~
KenanSulayman
That’s not correct. The worst that can happen is falsifying votes before
they’re written to the blockchain. And there’s nobody who will check the
„blockchain“ for his vote, because people want to vote and get over with it.

