Technology has positive impacts on many aspects of our social life. Designing
a 24hour globally connected architecture enables ease of access to a variety of
resources and services. Furthermore, technology like Internet has been a
fertile ground for innovation and creativity. One of such disruptive innovation
is blockchain -- a keystone of cryptocurrencies. The blockchain technology is
presented as a game changer for many of the existing and emerging
technologies/services. With its immutability property and decentralised
architecture, it is taking centre stage in many services as an equalisation
factor to the current parity between consumers and large
corporations/governments. One of such potential applications of the blockchain
is in e-voting schemes. The objective of such a scheme would be to provide a
decentralised architecture to run and support a voting scheme that is open,
fair and independently verifiable. In this paper, we propose potentially a new
e-voting protocol that utilises the blockchain as a transparent ballot box. The
protocol has been designed with adhering to the fundamental e-voting properties
in mind as well as offering a degree of decentralisation and allowing for the
voter to change/update their vote (within the permissible voting period). The
paper highlights the pros and cons of using blockchain for such a proposal from
practical point view in both development/deployment and usage contexts.
Concluding the paper with a potential roadmap for blockchain technology to be
able to support complex applications.Comment: 9 Pages, 6 Figures, 3 Tables, 5 Algorithms, Conferenc
