Sierra Leone government denies the role of blockchain in its recent election

Re:Sierra Leone government denies the role of blockchain in ... by darawk on Monday March 19, 2018 @07:19PM (#16624315)

You think that problems with election legitimacy don't exist? They definitely do. Especially in non-western countries, but even in western countries there are often questions of legitimacy. Blockchains have the potential to remove all doubt. I'd say that's a pretty worthwhile goal.

That being said, this particular project is not a good example of any of that. But blockchain for elections is actually one of the few truly technically legitimate uses of the technology.

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Re:Sierra Leone government denies the role of blockchain in ... by zbentley on Monday March 19, 2018 @09:49PM (#16625313)

> Blockchains have the potential to remove all doubt.

Secure cryptography and other algorithms that verify authenticity have the potential to remove all doubt. Blockchain has very little to do with it.

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Re:Sierra Leone government denies the role of blockchain in ... by darawk on Monday March 19, 2018 @10:26PM (#16625515)

Yes, but blockchains are a particularly suitable form of this technology, because they are decentralized. Not in the sense that people normally mean, mind you, but simply because they allow the unsynchronized, simultaneous submission of votes from around a country in a technically convenient way.

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Re:Sierra Leone government denies the role of blockchain in ... by arthur_pryor on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @08:15PM (#16634078)

> Blockchains have the potential to remove all doubt.

given a very specific and likely untenable list of assumptions about the way the entire human system works, yes, i'd agree that they might remove all doubt.

outside of textbooks, i think plenty of other comments here have cast doubt on how a blockchain voting implementation would solve real world problems in practice.

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