A TRANSPARENT APPROACH TO E-VOTING WITH BLOCKCHAIN

Abstract

Some forms of voting have been here ever since. Mostly used form all over the world are paper ballots. Electronic voting schemes are being popular only in the last decade and they are still unsolved. E-voting schemes bring problems mainly regarding security, credibility, transparency, reliability, and functionality. Estonia is the pioneer in this field and may be considered the state of the art. But there are only a few solutions using blockchain. Blockchain can deliver an answer to all of the mentioned problems and furthermore bring some advantages such as immutability and decentralization. The main problems of technologies utilizing blockchain for e-voting are their focus on only one field or lack of testing and comparison. In this paper, we present a blockchain-based e-voting platform, which can be used for any kind of voting. It is fully utilized by blockchain and all processes can be handled within it. After the start of the voting, the platform behaves as fully independent and decentralized without possibilities to affect the voting process. The data are fully transparent, but the identity of voters is secured by homomorphic encryption. We have tested and compared our solution in three different blockchains. The results show, that both public and private blockchains can be used with only a little difference in the speed. The key novelty of our solution is a fully decentralized management of e-voting platform through blockchain, transparency of the whole process and at the same time security and privacy of the voters thanks to homomorphic encryption.