A Blockchain-based Electronic Voting System: EtherVote

The development of an electronic voting system that would replace traditional election procedures is a research topic of great interest for many years. Blockchain technology could provide some guarantees and fulfill strong requirements for electronic voting platforms, such as transparency, immutability, and confidentiality. From time to time research is conducted to address problems in voting systems. Many research works attempt to implement secure and reliable voting systems, which address known security, anonymity, and fraud issues that might threaten such systems. This paper presents a proposal of a secure electronic voting system, the EtherVote, using the Ethereum Blockchain network that focuses deeply on the field of identification of eligible citizens. The proposed system will be entirely based on Blockchain without any central authority servers or databases, thus improving security, privacy, and election cost. Limitations, problems, and solutions are discussed, in order to make the proposed electronic voting system ideal and ready to use for national elections.Comment: 2 pages, Poster presented in ACM 5th summit on Gender Equality in Computing, GEC 2023, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece, 27 June 202

Secure national electronic voting system: Pilot implementation

Abstract Electronic voting provides accuracy and efficiency to the electoral processes. World democracies would benefit from a secure e-voting system not only to improve voter participation and trust but also to prevent electoral fraud. However, current e-voting systems are complex and have security weaknesses. In this paper, we describe a secure e-voting system for national and local elections. This system satisfies the important requirements of an e-voting system through state-of-the-art technologies and secure processes. The system relies on homomorphic cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, biometrics, smartcards, open source software, and secure computers for securely and efficiently implementing the system processes over the various stages of electoral process. Furthermore, we describe the pilot implementations of this system that test the main technologies and processes used. We explain how the used technologies and processes achieve the system requirement. In conclusion, we recommend adopting this system for its security, flexibility, economic, and scalability features

Use of Information and Communication Technologies in the Election Process: Ukrainian Realities and Foreign Experience

The features of the use of information and communication technologies in the election process have been examined in the article. In particular, the essence and features of electronic voting as a promising direction of modern information and communication technologies are determined. The foreign experience of using information and communication technologies is studied, namely, the normative-legal and organizational components of application of electronic voting and electronic counting of votes are determined. Based on the results of studying the experience of introducing e-voting on the example of the USA, Estonia, Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland, it has been concluded that it had not only positive consequences but also a negative result. Among the countries considered, in which electronic voting is currently used in elections, it has been found that Estonia has achieved the greatest success in this area, and which not only has a secure and reliable e-voting system but also a nationally mandated body, the National Electoral Committee, to manage the online voting system to ensure trust in the system. It has been found that in Ukraine the use of electronic voting in the election process is only at the stage of active discussion, experience in the use of this latest technology in the country is still lacking, and therefore its introduction remains an urgent need

HandiVote: simple, anonymous, and auditable electronic voting

We suggest a set of procedures utilising a range of technologies by which a major democratic deficit of modern society can be addressed. The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which voters are currently familiar. We believe that this holds considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation and control

E-voting in Brazil - the risks to democracy

Literature has shown that countries with strong democratic traditions, such as the United States and Canada, are not yet using electronic voting systems intensively, due to the concern for and emphasis on security. It has revealed that there is no such thing as an error-free computer system, let alone an electronic voting system, and that existing technology does not offer the conditions necessary for a reliable, accurate and secure electronic voting system. In this context, then, what are the risks of e-voting to democracy? In what ways, if at all, can more fragile, less mature democracies be buttressed with e-voting systems? As a key component of e-democracy, it seems that e-voting technologies are to become more secure and increasingly reliable in the near future and will indeed be adopted in many countries. In what ways, if at all, will the introduction of such systems increase voter confidence in the political system, promote citizen engagement in political life, and nurture the evolution of democracy? If both e-voting and edemocracy are emerging based on popular demand - that is, as a demand-driven alternative to current processes, then there is no doubt that they are likely to enhance and improve the efficiency of traditional democracy. However, if e-voting technology is being introduced based on a supply-driven fashion - the technology exists therefore it should and must be implemented - then the implications for democracy should be considered. Brazil's introduction of e-voting offers a cautionary tale of supply-driven technological implication. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the introduction of e-voting in Brazil is highly risky to democracy due to the lack of emphasis on security and the lack of a sociallyinformed and socially driven approach to technological innovation. The Brazilian example illustrates the democratic implications of a market-driven approach. The lack of a technology strategy designed to promote and extend democratic principles is not surprising given the closed door, market-based negotiations that led to the adoption of e-voting in Brazil. The promise, and indeed, the imperative of a democratic, voter-centered approach as an alternative for the development of an electronic voting system, is explored in the paper

Electronic plebiscites

We suggest a technology and set of procedures by which a major democratic de?cit of modern society can be addressed. The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which voters are currently familiar. We believe that systems like this hold considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation and control

A multi-candidate electronic voting scheme with unlimited participants

In this paper a new multi-candidate electronic voting scheme is constructed with unlimited participants. The main idea is to express a ballot to allow voting for up to k out of the m candidates and unlimited participants. The purpose of vote is to select more than one winner among $m$ candidates. Our result is complementary to the result by Sun peiyong$'$ s scheme, in the sense, their scheme is not amenable for large-scale electronic voting due to flaw of ballot structure. In our scheme the vote is split and hidden, and tallying is made for $G\ddot{o}del$ encoding in decimal base without any trusted third party, and the result does not rely on any traditional cryptography or computational intractable assumption. Thus the proposed scheme not only solves the problem of ballot structure, but also achieves the security including perfect ballot secrecy, receipt-free, robustness, fairness and dispute-freeness.Comment: 6 page