Design of Distributed Voting Systems

TL;DR

This paper analyzes existing electronic voting systems, proposes a more secure design template, and explores blockchain-based peer-to-peer voting with a low-power proof-of-stake modification for broader device compatibility.

Contribution

It introduces a new secure e-voting system template and a low-resource proof-of-stake modification for blockchain-based voting applicable to common devices.

Findings

Analysis of real-world e-voting systems and their design challenges

A new template for secure electronic voting systems

A modified proof-of-stake for blockchain voting on smartphones

Abstract

Countries like Estonia, Norway or Australia developed electronic voting systems, which could be used to realize parliamentary elections with the help of personal computers and the Internet. These systems are completely different in their design and their way to solve the same problem. In this thesis, we analyze some of the largest real-world systems, describe their building blocks and their general design to focus on possible problems in these electronic voting systems. Furthermore, we present a template for an e-voting system, which we designed to try to fulfill the preliminaries and requirements of a secure electronic voting system. We use the experiences and the building blocks of existing systems to combine them to another more secure system. Afterwards, we compare our concept with real-world systems to evaluate the fulfillments of the requirements. Conclusively, we discuss the occurring problems when designing a secure system. Peer-to-peer networks provide many advantages, like decentralization, which might be applicable to electronic voting systems. Therefore, we take a look on the distributed database called blockchain and the usage in a peer-to-peer voting system. Our contribution to this topic is a modification of the proof-of-stake, which enables the usage of common devices, like smartphones or tablets, for the blockchain verification and inclusion of new ballots to the chain. This proof does not need much computing power and has a lower carbon footprint than the proof-of-work in the Bitcoin protocol.