A transparent referendum protocol with immutable proceedings and verifiable outcome for trustless networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a secure, transparent, and verifiable electronic referendum protocol that combines SMPC and blockchain technology to ensure integrity and confidentiality without relying on trusted third parties.

Contribution

It presents a novel referendum protocol that guarantees transparency, confidentiality, and integrity in trustless networks using blockchain and SMPC, with formal security analysis.

Findings

Protocol ensures verifiability of outcomes on client side

Combines blockchain with SMPC for secure voting

Provides formal security evaluation

Abstract

High voter turnout in elections and referendums is very desirable in order to ensure a robust democracy. Secure electronic voting is a vision for the future of elections and referendums. Such a system can counteract factors that hinder strong voter turnout such as the requirement of physical presence during limited hours at polling stations. However, this vision brings transparency and confidentiality requirements that render the design of such solutions challenging. Specifically, the counting must be implemented in a reproducible way and the ballots of individual voters must remain concealed. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a referendum protocol that ensures transparency, confidentiality, and integrity, in trustless networks. The protocol is built by combining Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) and Distributed Ledger or Blockchain technology. The persistence and immutability of the protocol communication allows verifiability of the referendum outcome on the client side. Voters therefore do not need to trust in third parties. We provide a formal description and conduct a thorough security evaluation of our proposal.