The use of the digital “distributed, decentralized, public ledger” known as blockchain technology has been spreading in many industries. Slowly, experiment by experiment, there have been attempts at testing how blockchain’s unique characteristics can be taken advantage of in the administration of elections. Limited, local initiatives have shown that blockchain may have a real role to play. The latest news comes from a really interesting editorial at CoinGeek written by Steve Kaaru:

Cryptos should have come to Africa first, as that’s where they are needed the most. You might have heard people say this, and rightly so. Africa has the highest remittance fees in the world, twice the global average. A majority of the population is also unbanked, further making the case for crypto.

Blockchain technology is just as crucial in the continent. The technology introduces transparency, immutability, efficiency, low costs and accountability. These are all benefits that any country globally, no matter how developed, yearns for. In Africa, these benefits are needed much more than anywhere else in the world.

The first crippling challenge that blockchain technology will help Africa fight is corruption. This challenge is alarmingly prevalent in the continent that’s considered the cradle of mankind. Out of the 25 most corrupt countries, 15 are in Africa.

See the full article at CoinGeek. One interesting new look at the different blockchain voting experiments underway comes from Phil Goldstein at StateTech Magazine who recently published an article about how blockchain technology is working its way into America, finding a role in several different aspects of election administration and beyond. From the article:

Blockchain technology, in and of itself, cannot replace legacy systems for databases, record keeping or transaction management, but it can enhance such systems, experts say. Blockchain voting is also getting more attention, though cybersecurity experts are skeptical about it and it has not been tried in the United States on a large scale yet.

Most state government officials are still in a wait-and-see mode about the technology, though blockchain use cases continue to proliferate. According to a 2017 National Association of State CIOs report, 63 percent of those surveyed were still investigating blockchain in state government with informal discussions, 26 percent said there were no discussions of blockchain at that time and 5 percent had adopted blockchain technology in support of some state government services.