Screven County, Georgia, made history on Nov. 5, 2024, by being the first county in the United States to use the Bitcoin blockchain to save its election results.

The Screven County Board of Elections worked with Simple Proof, a U. S. company that protects virtual records on the Bitcoin blockchain, to ensure that their election effects cannot be modified.

Screven County Election Supervisor Stacy Scott Mincey hired Simple Proof to ensure vote processing in her county would not be challenged like other Georgia counties in the 2020 election.

“One of my goals has been to do everything I can to make certain citizens of the county feel like their votes matter, especially with increased considerations around security and voter fraud,” Mincey explained in an interview. “Using Simple Proof was just another step we took to ensure that our effects could not be falsified in any way. “

Simple Proof gained notoriety when its immutable proof service was used to safeguard the results of Guatemala’s most recent presidential election, which was detailed in the documentary Immutable Democracy.

Simple Proof uses an open-source OpenTimestamps protocol, developed through Peter Todd, a former Bitcoin Core developer.

The protocol enables cryptographic timestamping, which uses hashes for data on Bitcoin’s immutable ledger. Data is stored in the OP_RETURN service from a Bitcoin transaction. This is where the party submitting a transaction can receive arbitrary data, similar to the “note” area of ​​a physical check.

Anyone can then prove this immutable evidence on the Simple Proof platform or independently and without accepting it as true via the Bitcoin blockchain. In simpler terms, Simple Proof allows the public to determine the effects of elections and other official documents once they are protected through the Bitcoin blockchain.

In the case of the Screven County elections, the data stored on the blockchain are the election summary reports, which involve the counting of votes, and the declaration of votes cast, which provides a review of the electoral effects and other details from around the county.

Carlos Toriello, Elections Lead at Simple Proof, said that his organization worked to make it as easy as possible for Mincey to protect these documents.

“We wanted to make sure Stacy wasn’t in any pain,” Toriello told me in an interview.

He then explained that all Mincey had to do was email the documents to Simple Proof’s immutable evidence service, which automatically timestamped the documents on the blockchain.

The first example of this timestamp occurred at 7:54 p. m. m. EST on November 5, 2024 and can be viewed on their simple trial verification page.

Screenshot of the Simple Test Document Verification Portal

“Block number 869,047 is the first block on the Bitcoin chain that involves an election in the United States,” Toriello said.

While Simple Proof protects voting records, it doesn’t ensure the legitimacy of the votes. In the U.S., this responsibility falls on the local board of elections.

“In Georgia, the secretary of state is doing a wonderful job ensuring election security,” Mincey said.

“We use machines, we also have voting papers. “So if there is a problem, we can return and manually count the ballots,” he added.

Mincey went on to say that the machines counted the ballots and produced the aforementioned reports. However, she and her team have a way to ensure that the reports are at least the most common.

“Our county does an audit where we manually count a portion of the ballots to make sure they fit what the machine gave us,” Mincey said. “I think this is an additional security measure that we want to ensure during the validity of the election. “

Not only does Mincey have extensive knowledge about how voting works in her state, but she is also very wise about Bitcoin. And it is thanks to Bitcoin that he met Toriello.

Members of Mincey’s Meetup organization attended Bitcoin 2024 last July (Mincey was unable to attend the event). Group members were introduced to Toriello and Simple Proof’s booth at the conference. Toriello and the Simple Proof team were on hand to raise awareness about how public ledgers can immutably employ Bitcoin.

“Our call to action that Uncle Honey Badger sought to protect the election with Bitcoin,” Toriello said with a laugh.

(The Honey Badger, known for its toughness and resilience, is considered the mascot of Bitcoin. )

Promotional image from Simple Proof’s “Protect the Elections” campaign.

One of the members of the organization spoke with Toriello on the occasion and kept in touch with him afterwards. In September, Mincey’s Meetup organization invited Toriello to speak at one of their meetings.

“He spoke at the meeting and then I started talking to him because I was very intrigued by how we could make sure our effects were verified,” Mincey said. “I was blown away by how they used the simple test in Guatemala. “

In late October, Mincey proposed Simple Test at a board meeting, and the board voted in favor. Mincey contacted Toriello and the rest is history.

Toriello is positive after the good fortune of Simple Proof and Screven County and would now like to see Georgia put Simple Proof into effect statewide for its next election.

“We showed that we can implement this in about a week in one county,” Toriello said. “Why not do this in every single county in the state of Georgia from now on?”

Mincey would also like to see all Georgia counties use Simple Proof. She sought to make it so in the last elections, but time was not on her side.

“I was hoping that I could have introduced it to our state-level people so that it had more widespread use,” she said. “But, this time, there was no time to really get it out statewide.”

Toriello aims beyond Georgia.

“We’ve already made progress in many other places in the country,” said Toriello, who believes more counties and states will see the price of what Simple Proof offers after this good fortune in the county. Screen.

“I need this to spread like wildfire, because the government sees that it is undeniable that it is going to apply it and that it can do it,” he added.

“We’re very optimistic.”

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