Decentralized Verifiable Mail-in Ballot Counting for Postal Voting

TL;DR

This paper introduces DVote, a decentralized postal voting system that leverages blockchain and layer-2 tech to ensure trustworthiness in mail-in ballot counting by distributing computation among scrutineers.

Contribution

It presents a novel system combining blockchain and computer vision to decentralize mail-in ballot counting, reducing reliance on centralized trust.

Findings

Decentralizes ballot counting using blockchain technology.

Ensures computational integrity with the AnyTrust assumption.

Provides a prototype system demonstrating feasibility.

Abstract

As computer vision is prevalently used for mail-in ballot processing and counting, it becomes a point of centralized trust in postal voting. We propose DVote, a prototype system of postal voting that provides decentralized trust in computer vision. With blockchain and layer-2 technologies, DVote decentralizes the computation and model training of computer vision to a group of scrutineers that hold the AnyTrust assumption, i.e., at least one member is honest. Consequently, the computational integrity is anchored to the trustworthiness of a large public blockchain such as Ethereum.