Blockchain Technology Enabled E-Voting System. Challenges, Impacts and Developments

Contents

Abstract

List of Figures

List of Tables

1 Introduction

2 E-Voting Systems:
2.1 E-Voting advantages:
2.2 E-Voting disadvantages:

3 Blockchain technology overview:
3.1 Network Consensus:
3.2 Smart Contracts:

4 Blockchain enabled E-Voting:

5 Opportunities and benefits:

6 Challenges, Impacts and Developments:
6.1 Challenges in Blockchain Voting:
6.2 Impact and Developments:

7 Current E-Voting Projects in the Market:

8 Proposed E-Voting System:
8.1 Election Process:
8.2 Election Network:

9 Conclusion:

Abstract:

Voting is an essential tool for any democratic government, it’s the most important factor which makes government for the people and by the people, until now the paper ballot has been used for voting in most countries of the world where voters mark their vote on the paper and put it in the ballot box and at the end of election the votes are counted, but the biggest disadvantage of this system is that it cannot be auto­mated and voters have to physically go to the location for voting that makes the entire process very time consuming and expensive, also dig­ital ballots are vulnerable to hackers and results can be compromised, with the Blockchain technology and cryptography any user can login in GUI using the credentials provided by national election authority and cast their vote by signing it with their private key and trusted miners could verify whether the votes are legit or not by using voter’s public keys that makes the entire e-voting process transparent, cost effective, safe and secure.

The proposed system consists of a GUI, an application interface, central database, Blockchain network. Pre-election registration process, voting, counting, final election results and auditing were explained. The consensus algorithm was proof-of-work, all the election properties such as validity, privacy, individuality, flexibility etc. were satisfied.

List of Figures

1 Series of Blockchain

2 Pre-Election Flow

3 Election Flow

4 Election System Network Flow

List of Tables

1 E-Voting Requirements [1, 3]

2 Functions

1 Introduction

Blockchain technology is a rapidly evolving technology.We remember the times when we used internet just to send e-mails, and none of us ever thought we would use it for online shopping, banking etc.Looking at the current development in Blockchain technology we can surely en­sure that we are heading for a next revolution, Blockchain solves the problem of any valuable transfer on the World Wide Web without an intermediary third party, Each block in the Blockchain contains (data, hash, hash of previous block), the data inside the block can differ across multiple scenarios, all the contents of the block are identified using the hash which can differ with any change in the block therefore hash act as a fingerprint, hash of previous block helps in building a Blockchain by acting as a pointer by referring to itself in the next block in Blockchain, and because of the decentralized distributed ledger all the transactions and value associated with it can be verified accurately in the P2P net­work using the Proof of Work and creating a consensus. 1

Due to its evolving nature, new economic models can be created and deployed in the Blockchain which are not just limited to financial sec­tor, with the help of self-executing ‘Smart Contracts’ which are stored on the Blockchain and can be programmed to automate the processes based on various constraints/rules defined in the contract, These con­tracts can be used across multiple sectors like Storing secure medical records, Trading, Insurance, Electronic voting etc.

In this report we are going to talk about electronic voting systems, re­quirements, strengths and challenges associated with them.We will ex­plore more on Blockchain technology including benefits, impacts, risks in implementing the Blockchain based electronic voting system, then we will touch upon the current e-voting projects, finally we will describe our proposed model for E-Voting system and conclude this report. 1

2 E-Voting Systems:

When we talk about E-Voting, we recognize it has been discussed for years in several ways that how to use the electronic technology to make people participate in the election digitally by registering their votes electronically. [2, 3]

Only some countries are already using e-voting systems in elections, India use voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines for both Municipal and National elections in which voter can verify for whom they voted, and the stored results can be audited multiple times.4

Country like Estonia where 99% of public services are now online have been using internet voting i.e. I-voting platform since 2005 for all its elections. [5, 6] Before implementing any system there are security measures, constraints and requirements which are needed to be looked after.

2.1 E-Voting advantages:

- Accurate results and speed in vote count
- Low cost of setup because just internet connection cost is required to vote across all the available e-voting platforms
- Enhanced security as voting take place over secure communication channels
- Accessibility from any corner of the world just by having an internet connection
- Fraud prevention due to less human intervention therefore avoiding the fraud that could possibly take place at the polling stations
- Reduced influence by family members or peers as voters can change their opinion until end of the voting day several times as only the last vote will be considered 4

Table 1: E-Voting Requirements [1, 3]

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

2.2 E-Voting disadvantages:

- In many developing countries internet access is not available to everyone, example: In rural areas low wage workers could not afford internet also many people don’t know how to use and access the web
- E-voting machines use software to register the vote and it is built by a company, general public don’t know how a software works that might lead to fraudulent results being generated, vendors could also be bribed and in return they could tweak the software to work in their favor
- In the internet voting voter has to login by providing their personal and ID details, which will result in “Voter Anonymity” issue
- There are situations when machine don’t produce accurate results due to some errors,malfunctions,along with the possibility of hack­ing [4, 6]

3 Blockchain technology overview:

In 2008, with the release of bitcoin paper by Satoshi Nakamoto the first concept of Blockchain implementation came into the world and gave rise to a new generation of technology called Blockchain technol­ogy that combines cryptography and distributed computing which were already there for decades,and now both of these are combined to create a model where network of computers collaborate to maintain a shared and secure database therefore Blockchain technology is simply a dis­tributed secured database. 7

The distributed database consists of a string of blocks where each block is a record of data that has been encrypted and provided by a unique identifier called ‘hash’, then there are miners on the network which validate the transactions and add them to the Blockchain and then the miner broadcast the completed block to the other nodes on the network so that every node has latest copy of the database. [1, 7]

There is no centralized authority which verifies the transaction in Blockchain, it uses the ‘Distributed Consensus Algorithm’ where all the nodes in Blockchain network must agree about its state so that any single node could not alter the block without consensus of others, once all the nodes arrive at a common consensus the block will be perma­nently added to the continuously growing list of blocks forming a chain of data blocks.

As shown in the above figure, Series of blocks are chained together and whenever the participants generate any new data the new blocks are formed,each block is represented by the hash value, which is unique for the data within that block.

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Figure 1: Series of Blockchain

The hashing takes place using a standard algorithm which convert the data in block into 64 characters hash,it can always be recalculated to confirm that the original content have not changed. All blocks formed after the first block are chained with the hash value of the previous blocks meaning, the hash value of the next block is dependent on hash value of previous block therefore the data in any given block cannot be changed without changing all the upcoming blocks after it due to which it’s almost impossible to alter data in the Blockchain database once it’s written there and cannot be corrupted.

3.1 Network Consensus:

As Blockchain is a distributed system there is no centralized system which can certify the entries of blocks in Blockchain database, the database in maintained by large group of networks called nodes, they are provided with incentive tokens as they use their computing resources to solve mathematical problem.

As not all nodes could be trusted in the large group of P2P networks, so it requires system to provide a mechanism by which all nodes could arrive to a consensus. 1

Proof of Work:

Mining nodes solve the mathematical problem, verify the transac­tion, add the transaction to their block and then broadcast the com­plete state of the block to other nodes on the P2P network.

Every node is required to use its significant resources and try towards solving a complex cryptographic hash function problem, the first node which solves the problem wins the reward for their effort in terms of let’s say bitcoin in this case and along with a small transaction fee.

There is no chance of hacking a Blockchain network because of dis­tributed computing mechanism, if some nodes try to manipulate the block then their block will not match with other nodes in the Blockchain thus would not be accepted, if to tamper with the Blockchain all blocks on the network needs to be altered and solve hash algorithm for every block, that requires a control of more than 51% of the P2P network which is not profitable and almost impossible to do. 1

3.2 Smart Contracts:

Smart contracts are the key innovation of Blockchain 2.0, They consist of a computer code which is stored inside a Blockchain and encoded with contractual agreements. Smart contracts are self-executing which consists of lot of agreements written in terms of lines of code. They remove the need of any third party.

Let’s assume a group of ten people would like to make a combined investment to earn interest on their invested funds, then a smart con­tract could be programmed in such a way which take the interest, then divide it among ten people and send the amount to the wallets of all the stakeholders involved. 1

Smart contracts just act like a user on the Blockchain that is con­trolled by the code and not a user, they are immutable and distributed therefore cannot be maliciously changed by any individual or organiza­tion also they are verified by all the users on the Blockchain network, hence it can be said that “Code Is Law”. 1

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