How to Vote Privately Using Bitcoin

Bitcoin is the first decentralized crypto-currency that is currently by far the most popular one in use. The bitcoin transaction syntax is expressive enough to setup digital contracts whose fund transfer can be enforced automatically. In this paper, we design protocols for the bitcoin voting problem, in which there are n voters, each of which wishes to fund exactly one of two candidates A and B. The winning candidate is determined by majority voting, while the privacy of individual vote is preserved. Moreover, the decision is irrevocable in the sense that once the outcome is revealed, the winning candidate is guaranteed to have the funding from all n voters. As in previous works, each voter is incentivized to follow the protocol by being required to put a deposit in the system, which will be used as compensation if he deviates from the protocol. Our solution is similar to previous protocols used for lottery, but needs an additional phase to distribute secret random numbers via zero-knowledge-proofs. Moreover, we have resolved a security issue in previous protocols that could prevent compensation from being paid

A privacy-preserving, decentralized and functional Bitcoin e-voting protocol

Bitcoin, as a decentralized digital currency, has caused extensive research interest. There are many studies based on related protocols on Bitcoin, Bitcoin-based voting protocols also received attention in related literature. In this paper, we propose a Bitcoin-based decentralized privacy-preserving voting mechanism. It is assumed that there are n voters and m candidates. The candidate who obtains t ballots can get x Bitcoins from each voter, namely nx Bitcoins in total. We use a shuffling mechanism to protect voter's voting privacy, at the same time, decentralized threshold signatures were used to guarantee security and assign voting rights. The protocol can achieve correctness, decentralization and privacy-preservings. By contrast with other schemes, our protocol has a smaller number of transactions and can achieve a more functional voting method.Comment: 5 pages;3 figures;Smartworld 201

SHARVOT: secret SHARe-based VOTing on the blockchain

Recently, there has been a growing interest in using online technologies to design protocols for secure electronic voting. The main challenges include vote privacy and anonymity, ballot irrevocability and transparency throughout the vote counting process. The introduction of the blockchain as a basis for cryptocurrency protocols, provides for the exploitation of the immutability and transparency properties of these distributed ledgers. In this paper, we discuss possible uses of the blockchain technology to implement a secure and fair voting system. In particular, we introduce a secret share-based voting system on the blockchain, the so-called SHARVOT protocol. Our solution uses Shamir's Secret Sharing to enable on-chain, i.e. within the transactions script, votes submission and winning candidate determination. The protocol is also using a shuffling technique, Circle Shuffle, to de-link voters from their submissions.Comment: WETSEB'18:IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Engineering for Blockchain. 5 pages, 2 figure

Distributed Protocols at the Rescue for Trustworthy Online Voting

While online services emerge in all areas of life, the voting procedure in many democracies remains paper-based as the security of current online voting technology is highly disputed. We address the issue of trustworthy online voting protocols and recall therefore their security concepts with its trust assumptions. Inspired by the Bitcoin protocol, the prospects of distributed online voting protocols are analysed. No trusted authority is assumed to ensure ballot secrecy. Further, the integrity of the voting is enforced by all voters themselves and without a weakest link, the protocol becomes more robust. We introduce a taxonomy of notions of distribution in online voting protocols that we apply on selected online voting protocols. Accordingly, blockchain-based protocols seem to be promising for online voting due to their similarity with paper-based protocols

Always on Voting: A Framework for Repetitive Voting on the Blockchain

Elections repeat commonly after a fixed time interval, ranging from months to years. This results in limitations on governance since elected candidates or policies are difficult to remove before the next elections, if needed, and allowed by the corresponding law. Participants may decide (through a public deliberation) to change their choices but have no opportunity to vote for these choices before the next elections. Another issue is the peak-end effect, where the judgment of voters is based on how they felt a short time before the elections. To address these issues, we propose Always on Voting (AoV) -- a repetitive voting framework that allows participants to vote and change elected candidates or policies without waiting for the next elections. Participants are permitted to privately change their vote at any point in time, while the effect of their change is manifested at the end of each epoch, whose duration is shorter than the time between two main elections. To thwart the problem of peak-end effect in epochs, the ends of epochs are randomized and made unpredictable, while preserved within soft bounds. These goals are achieved using the synergy between a Bitcoin puzzle oracle, verifiable delay function, and smart contracts