A smart contract system for decentralized borda count voting

In this article, we propose the first self-tallying decentralized e-voting protocol for a ranked-choice voting system based on Borda count. Our protocol does not need any trusted setup or tallying authority to compute the tally. The voters interact through a publicly accessible bulletin board for executing the protocol in a way that is publicly verifiable. Our main protocol consists of two rounds. In the first round, the voters publish their public keys, and in the second round they publish their randomized ballots. All voters provide Non-interactive Zero-Knowledge (NIZK) proofs to show that they have been following the protocol specification honestly without revealing their secret votes. At the end of the election, anyone including a third-party observer will be able to compute the tally without needing any tallying authority. We provide security proofs to show that our protocol guarantees the maximum privacy for each voter. We have implemented our protocol using Ethereum's blockchain as a public bulletin board to record voting operations as publicly verifiable transactions. The experimental data obtained from our tests show the protocol's potential for the real-world deployment

Secure digital voting system based on blockchain technology

Electronic voting or e-voting has been used in varying forms since 1970s with fundamental benefits over paper based systems such as increased efficiency and reduced errors. However, there remain challenges to achieve wide spread adoption of such systems especially with respect to improving their resilience against potential faults. Blockchain is a disruptive technology of current era and promises to improve the overall resilience of e-voting systems. This paper presents an effort to leverage benefits of blockchain such as cryptographic foundations and transparency to achieve an effective scheme for e-voting. The proposed scheme conforms to the fundamental requirements for e-voting schemes and achieves end-to-end verifiability. The paper presents details of the proposed e-voting scheme along with its implementation using Multichain platform. The paper presents in-depth evaluation of the scheme which successfully demonstrates its effectiveness to achieve an end-to-end verifiable e-voting scheme

Public Evidence from Secret Ballots

Elections seem simple---aren't they just counting? But they have a unique, challenging combination of security and privacy requirements. The stakes are high; the context is adversarial; the electorate needs to be convinced that the results are correct; and the secrecy of the ballot must be ensured. And they have practical constraints: time is of the essence, and voting systems need to be affordable and maintainable, and usable by voters, election officials, and pollworkers. It is thus not surprising that voting is a rich research area spanning theory, applied cryptography, practical systems analysis, usable security, and statistics. Election integrity involves two key concepts: convincing evidence that outcomes are correct and privacy, which amounts to convincing assurance that there is no evidence about how any given person voted. These are obviously in tension. We examine how current systems walk this tightrope.Comment: To appear in E-Vote-Id '1

BBB-Voting: 1-out-of-k Blockchain-Based Boardroom Voting

Voting is a means to agree on a collective decision based on available choices (e.g., candidates), where participants (voters) agree to abide by their outcome. To improve some features of e-voting, decentralized solutions based on a blockchain can be employed, where the blockchain represents a public bulletin board that in contrast to a centralized bulletin board provides $100\%$ availability and censorship resistance. A blockchain ensures that all entities in the voting system have the same view of the actions made by others due to its immutable and append-only log. The existing blockchain-based boardroom voting solution called Open Voting Network (OVN) provides the privacy of votes and perfect ballot secrecy, but it supports only two candidates. We present BBB-Voting, an equivalent blockchain-based approach for decentralized voting than OVN, but in contrast to it, BBB-Voting supports 1-out-of-$k$ choices and provides a fault tolerance mechanism that enables recovery from stalling participants. We provide a cost-optimized implementation using Ethereum, which we compare with OVN and show that our work decreases the costs for voters by $13.5\%$ in terms of gas consumption. Next, we outline the extension of our implementation scaling to magnitudes higher number of participants than in a boardroom voting, while preserving the costs paid by the authority and participants -- we made proof-of-concept experiments with up to 1000 participants

Blockchain, consensus, and cryptography in electronic voting

Motivated by the recent trends to conduct electronic elections using blockchain technologies, we review the vast literature on cryptographic voting and assess the status of the field. We analyze the security requirements for voting systems and describe the major ideas behind the most influential cryptographic protocols for electronic voting. We focus on the great importance of consensus in the elimination of trusted third parties. Finally, we examine whether recent blockchain innovations can satisfy the strict requirements set for the security of electronic voting

Blockchain-based Decentralized Application for Electronic Voting using an Electronic ID

An electronic voting system that fully mimics real-world systems has long been desired. Until recently, it had not been possible to fully address the mandatory properties of a real-world voting scheme, simultaneously. Recently, with the onset of new technologies and research, however, it is not only possible to fulfill these very properties, but also to improve the anonymity and convenience of voting. A decentralized and self-tallying electronic voting protocol that substantially enhances the privacy of voters and diminishes centralization is developed in this work and presented in this dissertation. These properties are accomplished through a symbiotic relationship between the Ethereum Blockchain and the Portuguese electronic ID. Unlike previously proposed Blockchain e-voting protocols, this is the first implementation that more closely fulfills most of the security requirements of a real-world voting scheme. Furthermore, this system improves currently in-use e-Voting systems by using a self-tallying protocol. Thus, each voting citizen is able to compute the tally of the election and has complete control over their own vote. The execution of this protocol is enforced using the consensus mechanism that safeguards the Ethereum Blockchain. To prove its feasibility, its implementation was tested on the official Proof of Work (PoW) test network of Ethereum (known as Ropsten). The financial and computational breakdowns are on par with the leading Blockchain e-voting protocol.Um sistema de votação eletrónica que reproduza eficazmente sistemas eleitorais utilizados no mundo é há muito desejado. Até recentemente, não era possível satisfazer, simultaneamente, as propriedades intrínsecas de um sistema de votação tradicional. Recentemente, com o advento de novas tecnologias e investigação, não só é possível cumprir estas propriedades, como também melhorar o anonimato, acessibilidade e a própria estrutura do processo eleitoral. Neste trabalho, apresentamos um protocolo de votação eletrónica descentralizada e auto contável, que aumenta a privacidade dos eleitores e diminui a centralização. Estas propriedades são alcançadas através de uma relação simbiótica entre a Blockchain de Ethereum e o cartão de cidadão eletrónico Português. Ao contrário de protocolos eleitorais de recurso a Blockchain propostos anteriormente, esta é a primeira implementação que de mais perto atende à maioria dos requisitos de segurança de um esquema de votação real. Além disso, este sistema aperfeiçoa os sistemas de votação eletrónica utilizados atualmente, através da utilização de um protocolo auto contável. Desta forma, cada eleitor é capaz de fazer a contagem eleitoral por si mesmo, e verificar que todos os intervenientes agem de acordo com o protocolo. A execução do protocolo é compelida através do mesmo mecanismo de consenso distribuído que protege a Blockchain de Ethereum. Por forma a provar a sua viabilidade, a implementação foi testada na rede oficial de testes Proof of Work (PoW) de Ethereum (Ropsten). Os custos financeiros e computacionais estão ao mesmo nível do mais importante protocolo de e-voting associado a Blockchai

Analysis of Blockchain Solutions for E-Voting: A Systematic Literature Review

To this day, abstention rates continue to rise, largely due to the need to travel to vote. This is why remote e-voting will increase the turnout by allowing everyone to vote without the need to travel. It will also minimize the risks and obtain results in a faster way compared to a traditional vote with paper ballots. In fact, given the high stakes of an election, a remote e-voting solution must meet the highest standards of security, reliability, and transparency to gain the trust of citizens. In literature, several remote e-voting solutions based on blockchain technology have been proposed. Indeed, the blockchain technology is proposed today as a new technical infrastructure for several types of IT applications because it allows to remove the TTP and decentralize transactions while offering a transparent and fully protected data storage. In addition, it allows to implement in its environment the smart-contracts technology which is used to automate and execute agreements between users. In this paper, we are interested in reviewing the most revealing e-voting solutions based on blockchain technology

¿Es la tecnología blockchain el futuro del voto?

Trabajo de Fin de Grado en Ingeniería Informática, Facultad de Informática UCM, Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, Curso 2021/2022.Is blockchain technology the future of voting systems? It has never been an easy task to come to an agreement. Dialogue and discussion have been always necessary to obtain support from others so societies can be arranged and developed. Nonetheless, it is when this dialogue and discussion diverts when society comes to a stop. As it could be seen in the last United States elections, political parties, and even civilians, are increasingly questioning the results from a democratic election and the conflict that emerges from it. This has to do with the current voting systems, like ballots boxes, and more importantly automated voting systems, as they are corruptible and have a lack of transparency and traceability, and in a moment where an untrusting society arises, this causes mayor instability. In parallel, in the recent years Blockchain technology and decentralized networks have been evolving unstoppably. Governance systems, financial entities, supply chains, IoT… Blockchain has awaken much interest in various sectors for the unique characteristics it offers, like the incorruptibility of data, traceability, and transparency. For these reasons, Blockchain technology presents as a good option for current voting system problems. However, is it currently a viable option? Or there are other challenges that must be addressed previously?¿Es la tecnología Blockchain el futuro del voto? Ponerse de acuerdo nunca ha sido tarea fácil. Desde siempre el diálogo y el debate de ideas han sido necesarios para ganar apoyos y de esta forma organizar y hacer prosperar una sociedad. No obstante, es cuando este debate se desvía cuando la situación se complica y se estanca. Se ha podido ver en las últimas elecciones en Estados Unidos cómo, cada vez más, los partidos políticos, e incluso los propios ciudadanos, ponen en cuestionamiento los resultados de unas elecciones y el conflicto que surge a raíz de ello. Esto se debe a que los sistemas actuales de votación, como las urnas, y más aún los sistemas automatizados de votación, son manipulables y carecen de transparencia y trazabilidad, y en un momento donde la población es cada vez más desconfiada, esto supone una mayor inestabilidad. En paralelo a todo esto, en los últimos años la tecnología Blockchain y las redes descentralizadas se han ido desarrollando continuamente. Sistemas de gobernanza, entidades financieras, cadenas de suministros, IoT… Esta tecnología ha suscitado mucho interés en multitud de sectores por las cualidades únicas que proporciona, entre las cuales destacan la incorruptibilidad de los datos, la trazabilidad y la transparencia. Es por ello que la tecnología Blockchain se presenta como una buena opción para los problemas actuales de los sistemas de votación. Sin embargo, ¿es viable actualmente? ¿O por el contrario hay otros retos que deben ser superados previamente?Depto. de Sistemas Informáticos y ComputaciónFac. de InformáticaTRUEunpu