Following the presidential elections conducted in Sierra Leone on March 7, it was widely reported in the media that Sierra Leone had become the first country in the world to run blockchain-powered elections. These reports were based on the claims of a Swiss blockchain company, Agora, where it said that the country had utilized blockchain tech to tally and audit the election results. However, it seems that the company’s claims were entirely false. The National Election Commission (NEC) of Sierra Leone released an official statement on Twitter on March 18 to set the record straight. The tweet quoted the NEC Chair Mohamed Conteh saying that “the NEC has not used, and is not using blockchain technology in any part of the electoral process.”
Tamba Lamin, a Sierra Leone citizen, pointed out in his medium blog that as per the official handbook of the NEC of Sierra Leone for ‘Polling and Counting Procedures,’ all of the polling and counting is done manually.
The official handbook has illustrations highlighting how the ballot is marked manually without any involvement of technology, with a ‘pen’ or ‘fingerprint.’ Similarly, all the tallying of votes was also done manually, as per the handbook.
In another tweet on March 19, NEC of Sierra Leone clarified the technology they utilized to conduct the elections: C++ and MS SQL, but no blockchain.
Full Article: Sierra Leone didn’t really use blockchain in their election.