E-Voting with Blockchain: An E-Voting Protocol with Decentralisation and Voter Privacy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a blockchain-based e-voting protocol emphasizing decentralization and voter privacy, aiming for transparency, fairness, and verifiability, while discussing practical deployment challenges and future prospects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel blockchain e-voting protocol that supports vote updates and decentralization, addressing fundamental e-voting properties with practical considerations.

Findings

Protocol ensures transparency and voter privacy.

Supports vote updating within voting period.

Discusses practical deployment challenges.

Abstract

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.