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Rachel Wolfson
Reporter
Rachel Wolfson
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Recording and storing election data is becoming more critical than ever for ensuring the transparency and integrity of democratic processes.
Election data includes voter registration, results, reports of irregularities, and more. Recording this information is important for several reasons.
For instance, the MIT Election Data and Science Lab notes in a blog post that one of the biggest benefits of precinct data is that it provides insight into variations at the local level.
“Just as county-wide or district-wide election results give more precise information than state-level data, precinct data can help explain patterns at a local level with much more precision and nuance than data at a higher level of aggregation,” the post stated.
Challenges With Election Data Stored On Centralized Servers
While election data is necessary for evaluating and ensuring fair elections, the information generated is often stored on centralized databases. Unfortunately, this presents a number of challenges.
Daniel Duke Odongo, Director of Product at Ushahidi – an organization focused on citizen-generated data – told Cryptonews that civil society organizations, government agencies, or third-party systems maintain election data stored in centralized databases. This centralized model presents notable vulnerabilities.
“Given that these institutions more often than not do not collaborate or share info between themselves, this siloed approach is susceptible to technical failures, cyber-attacks, and even manipulation by malicious actors seeking to influence election outcomes or restrict access for stakeholders,” Duke Odongo said.
Therefore, he believes there is a higher risk of data loss or tampering, potentially undermining the transparency and integrity of election processes.
Nathan Freitas, Founder and Director of The Guardian Project – a platform that creates secure software libraries – further told Cryptonews that traditional databases store information without cryptographic signatures or an audit trail.
“It is a file on a disk, a row in a table, a post on a blog,” Freitas said. “You can access this data by knowing a specific filename, path, URL, or database index identifier.”
Decentralized Storage To Preserve Election Records
Given the vulnerabilities associated with centralized storage, a few projects have begun using decentralized storage solutions to house election data.
For example, Duke Odongo explained that Ushahidi recently launched an “Election Data Resilience initiative. This project stores crowd-sourced election reports on the Filecoin decentralized storage network.
“A decentralized approach distributes data across a wide network of nodes, significantly reducing the risks associated with localized disruptions or unauthorized modifications,” Duke Odongo said.
He elaborated that storing election data on the Filecoin network offers several benefits. For instance, decentralized storage can improve data integrity. This is because it employs cryptographic hashing and content addressing, which makes unauthorized data alterations easily detectable.
Ushahidi is currently working with a small group of select local election monitoring groups and advocacy networks in Kenya to pilot how the Election Data Resilience Initiative may work on a small scale.
This will help address any operational challenges, test the platform’s reliability, and establish best practices. Insights gathered will inform the broader rollout, helping create a community-driven election data ecosystem.
“This initiative allows civil society, researchers, and the general public to engage with electoral data in a meaningful way, and we see this as an important step toward informed decision-making and holding governments accountable,” Duke Odongo remarked.
Decentralized Storage For Countering Election Misinformation
A project known as Numbers Protocol is also leveraging Filecoin’s decentralized network to ensure authenticity during election periods.
Numbers Protocol has partnered with Taiwanese media to combat misinformation by assigning unique blockchain-based digital identities to election-related images. These images are then securely stored using Filecoin’s decentralized network.
Sofia Yan, Numbers Protocol Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, told Cryptonews that during Taiwan’s 2024 election, Numbers Protocol worked with journalists and media outlets to authenticate the provenance of election campaign content.
This initiative was led by Numbers Protocol and Stanford’s Starling Lab. These projects worked closely with Taiwanese news outlets and journalists, assigning unique blockchain-based digital identities to images and videos.
Yan explained that Numbers Protocol leverages its “Capture App” to allow users to capture media with embedded metadata. This information is then hashed and stored immutably on the blockchain, creating a secure record on the Filecoin network.
“This strengthens public trust in election coverage by documenting key moments with traceable, secure data, countering misinformation in Taiwan’s sensitive political context,” Yan said.
Yan added that the Numbers Protocol is currently helping with the upcoming Indonesia and India elections.
Will Decentralized Storage For Election Data Be Widely Adopted?
Clara Tsao, founding officer of Filecoin Foundation, told Cryptonews that cryptography and distributed systems are the best ways to authenticate key documents. She noted that Filecoin aims to support more projects for content integrity in the future.
However, a number of challenges may hamper adoption. Duke Odongo pointed out that decentralized election data storage faces several technical and logistical issues. This is especially apparent in regions with limited digital infrastructure and unreliable internet connectivity.
To address this, Ushahidi is exploring a hybrid model that combines local storage for offline access with decentralized cloud backups. This will enable periodic data synchronization when internet connectivity is available.
“This approach still ensures resilience and data availability, even in regions with limited or intermittent internet access,” Duke Odongo said.
Yan added that while decentralized technologies offer a solution to providing a transparent and verifiable method to authenticate media – which can be especially useful as deepfake and generative AI technologies emerge – the widespread adoption will require overcoming technical challenges.
She added that regulatory compliance remains problematic, noting that protocols must be aligned with local laws.
“By tackling these challenges in the future, decentralized storage can become a viable, transparent solution for election data,” Yan said.
In the meantime, Tsao shared that the Filecoin Foundation hopes to educate election officials and governments moving forward.
“This will help these officials understand the power of decentralized storage to ensure accountability and transparency to citizens during an election process,” she said.
