Screven County, Georgia made history on November 5, 2024 when it became the first county in the United States to use the Bitcoin blockchain to secure the results of its elections.
The Screven County Board of Elections worked with Simple Proof, a US company that protects digital documents using the Bitcoin blockchain, to ensure their election results could not be changed.
Screven County Elections Supervisor Stacy Scott Mincey hired Simple Proof to ensure that the handling of votes in her county was not called into question as it was in another Georgia county during the 2020 election.
“One of my goals was to do everything I could to make sure that the people of the county felt safe, that their votes counted, especially with the increased concerns around security and voter fraud,” Mincey told me in an interview . “Using Simple Proof was just one step we took to ensure our results cannot be tampered with in any way.”
What simple proof does
Simple Proof rose to prominence when its immutable proof service was used to secure the results of Guatemala’s most recent presidential election, as detailed in the documentary Immutable Democracy.
Simple Proof uses an open-source protocol called OpenTimestamps, developed by Peter Todd, a former Bitcoin Core developer.
The protocol enables cryptographic timestamping, using hash functions to store information about Bitcoin’s immutable ledger. The information is stored in the OP_RETURN function of a Bitcoin transaction. This is where the party sending a transaction can record arbitrary information, similar to the “memo” space on a physical check.
Anyone can then verify this immutable proof on Simple Proof’s platform or independently reliably via the Bitcoin blockchain. Simply put, Simple Proof allows the public to verify election results and other official documents once they are secured by the Bitcoin blockchain.
Simple evidence and Screven County
In the case of the Screven County election, the information stored on the blockchain was the summary election reports, which contain the votes, and the Declaration of Votes Cast, which provides a nationwide overview of election results and other election details.
Carlos Toriello, director of elections at Simple Proof, said his organization has worked to make it as easy as possible for Mincey to protect these documents.
“We wanted to make sure this would be painless for Stacy,” Toriello told me in an interview.
He went on to say that all Mincey had to do was email the documents to Simple Proof’s immutable proof service, which automatically timestamped the documents on the blockchain.
The first instance of this timestamp occurred at 7:54 PM EST on November 5, 2024 and can be viewed via the Simple Proof verification page.
“Block number 869,047 is the first block in the Bitcoin chain to contain evidence of US elections,” Toriello said.
Screven County’s Voting System
Although Simple Proof protects voting data, it does not guarantee the legitimacy of votes. In the US, this responsibility lies with the local election board.
“In Georgia, the secretary of state is doing a great job making sure the elections are secure,” Mincey said.
“We use machines, but we also have paper ballots. So if there is a problem, we can go back and count the paper ballots by hand,” she added.
Mincey went on to say that the machines count ballots and produce the aforementioned reports. However, she and her team have a way to verify that the reports are at least largely correct.
“Our county does an audit where we hand count some of the ballots to make sure they match what we got out of the machine,” Mincey said. “I think it’s a great additional security step to ensure that the election is valid.”
How Mincey found simple evidence
Not only does Mincey have an in-depth knowledge of how voting works in her state, but she is also quite familiar with Bitcoin. And it’s actually thanks to Bitcoin that she met Toriello.
Members of Mincey’s meetup group attended Bitcoin 2024 last July (Mincey was unable to attend the event). The group members met Toriello and Simple Proof’s booth at the conference. Toriello and the Simple Proof team were there to raise awareness about how public records can be protected in an immutable way using Bitcoin.
“Our call to action was Uncle Honey Badger wants you to protect the election with Bitcoin,” Toriello said with a laugh.
(The Honey Badger, known for its toughness and resilience, is sometimes considered Bitcoin’s mascot.)
One of the group members spoke with Toriello during the event and stayed in touch with him afterwards. In September, Mincey’s meetup group invited Toriello to speak virtually at one of their gatherings.
“He spoke at the meeting and then I started talking to him because I was very intrigued about how we could make sure our results were verified,” Mincey said. “I was just impressed with how they used Simple Proof in Guatemala.”
In late October, Mincey proposed using Simple Proof at a board meeting, and the board voted in favor. Mincey contacted Toriello and the rest is now history.
Further implementation of simple proof
Toriello is optimistic after the successful efforts of Simple Proof and Screven County and would now like to see Georgia implement Simple Proof’s services statewide for the next election.
“We have proven that we can implement this in a province within a week or so,” Toriello said. “Why not do this in every county in the state of Georgia from now on?”
Mincey would also like to see every county in Georgia use Simple Proof. She actually wanted this to be the case in the last election, but time was not on her side.
“I hoped that I could have introduced it to our people at the state level so that it would be used more widely,” she said. “But this time there wasn’t time to really get the word out statewide.”
Toriello also has his sights set outside Georgia.
“We’ve already had success in a number of different places across the country,” said Toriello, who believes more counties and states will see the value of what Simple Proof has to offer after this success story in Screven County.
“I want this to spread like wildfire because the authorities see that this is easy to implement and that they can afford it,” he added.
“We are very optimistic.”