We count the votes together
Carlos Toriello is changing the political system in Latin America. He is the face of a volunteer movement, consisting of concerned citizens in Guatemala, called Fiscal Digital. This translates to, “The Digital Witness”. Their goal is to perform real-time post-election audits of paper ballot elections in a corrupt and broken system.
Last year, in mid 2019, Guatemala held an election. Everything was going fine, until doubt was cast on the official results through social media. The situation escalated quickly and no one seemed to have a solution. The election officials failed miserably at a recount.
Back in 2018, Carlos and some colleagues built a pilot system for a referendum and adapted it to the general election once things fell apart at the seams. The audit platform received contributions from over 1,500 independent citizens. The system operates by taking original images of the election ballots and hashing them to four(4) different blockchains, Bitcoin, Doge, HoriZen and EOS. Then citizens are asked to verify the hash of the image against the originals in the database. Once 3 different citizens have derived the same hash for the same ballot image, that ballot is considered valid and the votes are counted.
The stage was set. The Guatemalan government was in quite a predicament. Unrest was at hand. The election officials were in a tough spot as the first magistrates we being accused of election crimes. #Fiscal_Digital made the only proposal to correct this criminal mistake through technology, allowing Guatemala to become the first country in the world to incorporate blockchain into its national election system. Fortunately, their solution was simple and saves millions of dollars. Authenticating election results in real time is now possible.
Carlos gets into the details around the 07:46 mark.
Something as simple as having multiple people collaborate to digitize the tallies of the votes on those images while arriving at the same conclusion is enough to audit election results. The system is live now. You can see results and participate yourself on the Fiscal Digital website.
The US Government needs this tech
Governments should consider using Fiscal Digital is an inexpensive process to determine election authenticity in near real time. The code is already available. Instead of UBI, give out election audit jobs. Reward people for doing the audit work and tallying votes. It’s cheaper and builds a more sustainable economy if you pay the citizens to act as the witness. Not to mention giving the people the transparency they so desperately deserve.
Their motivation is nearly as impressive as their solution. If you know people in governments who can give this project visibility, please make sure to contact Carlos. His information is below. What they are doing has the ability to bring back the sanctity of democratic elections. Give the power to the people and let them check the results.
Quote your favorite moment and tag @CoinStructive, @djkinkle, @carlostoriello, #Fiscal_Digital & #LABradio.
Enjoy.
Further Reading and Resources
Carlos Toriello Herrerías, Volunteer & Champion at Fiscal Digital – LinkedIn – Twitter
Fiscal Digital – Website – Email – YouTube – Facebook – Github – Use hashtag #Fiscal_Digital
