Screven County, Georgia made historical past on November 5, 2024 when it grew to become the primary county in america to make use of the Bitcoin blockchain to safeguard the outcomes of its elections.
The Screven County Board of Elections labored with Easy Proof, a U.S. firm that protects digital data utilizing the Bitcoin blockchain, to make sure that their election outcomes couldn’t be altered.
Stacy Scott Mincey, Screven County Election Supervisor, employed Easy Proof to guarantee that the dealing with of votes in her county wasn’t known as into query the way in which it was in one other Georgia county through the 2020 elections.
“Certainly one of my objectives was to do the whole lot I might to guarantee that folks within the county felt safe, that their votes counted, particularly with the heightened issues round safety and voter fraud,” Mincey informed me in an interview. “Utilizing Easy Proof was only one extra step that we took to guarantee that our outcomes couldn’t be tampered with in any means.”
What Easy Proof Does
Easy Proof gained notoriety when its immutable proof service was used to safeguard the outcomes of Guatemala’s most up-to-date presidential election, which was detailed within the documentary Immutable Democracy.
Easy Proof makes use of an open-source protocol known as OpenTimestamps, developed by Peter Todd, a former Bitcoin Core developer.
The protocol allows cryptographic timestamping, which makes use of hash capabilities to protect data on Bitcoin’s immutable ledger. The data is saved within the OP_RETURN perform of a Bitcoin transaction. That is the place the celebration sending a transaction can embody arbitrary data, which has similarities to the “memo” area on a bodily verify.
Anybody can then confirm this immutable proof on Easy Proof’s platform or independently in a trustless method by way of the Bitcoin blockchain. Put an easier means, Easy Proof allows the general public to confirm the election outcomes and different official paperwork as soon as they’re secured by the Bitcoin blockchain.
Easy Proof And Screven County
Within the case of the Screven County elections, the data saved on the blockchain was the Election Abstract Reviews, which include vote tallies, and the Assertion of Votes Solid, which supplies a county-wide overview of election outcomes and different election particulars.
Carlos Toriello, Elections Lead at Easy Proof, stated that his group labored to make it as straightforward as potential for Mincey to guard these paperwork.
“We wished to guarantee that this was painless for Stacy,” Toriello informed me in an interview.
He went on to share that every one Mincey needed to do was electronic mail the paperwork to Easy Proof’s immutable proof service, which robotically timestamped the paperwork on the blockchain.
The primary occasion of this timestamping occurred at 7:54 p.m. EST on November 5, 2024 and will be considered by way of its Easy Proof verification web page.
“Block quantity 869,047 is the primary block in Bitcoin’s chain to include proof of a U.S. election,” stated Toriello.
Screven County’s Voting System
Whereas Easy Proof protects voting data, it doesn’t make sure the legitimacy of the votes. Within the U.S., this duty falls on the native board of elections.
“In Georgia, the Secretary of State does an amazing job of creating certain that the elections are safe,” stated Mincey.
“We use machines, however we now have paper ballots, too. So, if there’s an issue, we will return and hand rely the paper ballots,” she added.
Mincey went on to share that the machines rely the ballots and produce the aforementioned studies. Nevertheless, she and her group have a method of checking that the studies are at the very least principally right.
“Our county does an audit the place we hand rely a portion of the ballots to ensure they match what we acquired from the machine,” stated Mincey. “I feel that is an amazing further step of safety that we now have to guarantee that the elections are legitimate.”
How Mincey Discovered Easy Proof
Not solely does Mincey have a deep information of how voting works in her state, however she’s additionally fairly acquainted with Bitcoin. And it’s truly due to Bitcoin that she met Toriello.
Members of Mincey’s meetup group attended Bitcoin 2024 this previous July (Mincey couldn’t make the occasion). The group members met Toriello and Easy Proof’s sales space on the convention. Toriello and the Easy Proof group had been there elevating consciousness about how public data will be protected in an immutable method utilizing Bitcoin.
“Our name to motion was Uncle Honey Badger desires you to guard the elections with Bitcoin,” stated Toriello with fun.
(The Honey Badger, recognized for its toughness and resilience, is typically thought of Bitcoin’s mascot.)
One of many group members spoke with Toriello on the occasion and stayed in contact with him afterwards. In September, Mincey’s meetup group invited Toriello to talk nearly at one in every of their conferences.
“He spoke on the assembly, and afterwards I began speaking to him as a result of I used to be very intrigued about how we might make sure that our outcomes had been verified,” stated Mincey. “I used to be simply blown away at how they used Easy Proof in Guatemala.”
In late October, Mincey proposed utilizing Easy Proof at a board assembly, and the board voted in favor of it. Mincey contacted Toriello, and the remaining is now historical past.
Additional Implementation Of Easy Proof
Toriello is optimistic after Easy Proof and Screven County’s profitable endeavor and would now prefer to see Georgia implement Easy Proof’s providers statewide for its subsequent elections.
“We proved that we will implement this inside per week or so in a county,” stated Toriello. “Why not do that in each county within the state of Georgia from right here on out?”
Mincey, too, wish to see each county in Georgia use Easy Proof. She truly wished this to be the case on this previous election, however time wasn’t on her aspect.
“I hoped that I might have launched it to our state-level folks in order that it had extra widespread use,” she stated. “However, this time, there was no time to essentially get it out statewide.”
Toriello additionally has his sights set past Georgia.
“We have already made inroads in a bunch of various locations round the entire nation,” stated Toriello, who believes that extra counties and states will see the worth in what Easy Proof provides after this success story in Screven County.
“I would like this to unfold like wildfire as authorities see that is easy to implement and so they can afford it,” he added.
“We’re very optimistic.”
