How Decred contributed to a more transparent election in Brazil

In October 2020, São Paulo, the biggest city in American continents, held its municipal elections and had its second round disputed between Bruno Covas (PSDB party - Center Right) and Guilherme Boulos (PSOL party - Left). Those two candidates had one thing in common, despite their very different ideologies.

Both of them used the Voto Legal platform, which is a crowdfunding system that seeks more transparency to the electoral process. Voto Legal uses Decred blockchain to record the donations which were given to each candidate. Each donation in the platform has a unique mathematical receipt (hash Blake-256). Composed by donation information such as: donor name, donor registration number, amount and time.

When a donation is made on the platform, the hash of the donation is logged on the dcrtime server. These donation receipts are summed into a unique hash representing the merkle root. This means that if the hash of any donation changes, all subsequent donations would also change. Whenever a donation is complete, a receipt with all the candidate and donor information is also generated, this receipt contains a link to Decred Block Explorer, which has the blockchain details of the transaction.

The final hash (merkle root) is recorded in Decred's public blockchain, generating an immutable transaction!

Decred is a cryptocurrency which is best known for its descentralization. The Politeia platform was created to give transparency to governance and open public discusssion for project matters, creating a new form of democracy. With VotoLegal, Decred shows that besides having its own democracy, the tools and features of the project can also help democracies around the world.  Transparency is very important for public life!  Decred works to make it more accessible and integrated with society's values.

Read more about the Voto Legal platform here.