Block Chain-Based Secure Electronic Voting Systems

The article discusses some elements in the Remote Electronic Voting system. Software used in Remote Electronic voting had significant impact on activities of traditional participants in the electoral process: voters and observers. A number of risks of interference with the electronic voting system have been identified.The author made an attempt to consider guarantees that ensure the secrecy of voting and prevent the distortion of the will of voters, which are implemented in the federal platform for Remote Electronic Voting. Moreover, additional guarantees have been identified that are not available in traditional forms of voting. One of them is the ability of the voter to check the account and invariability of his ballot in the system. It was concluded that there are technical solutions that ensure voting in accordance with the basic principles of elections. It is proposed to develop a mechanism for recounting ballots by election commissions when conducting Remote Electronic Voting.Due to the digital nature of electronic voting, the institution of observation requires additional protection mechanisms. It was concluded that electronic voting transformed the activities of the observer. The presence of a “digital trace” provides the observer with the ability to track changes in the blockchain system. The author proposed a new definition of “observer of Remote Electronic Voting”, because the definition of the observer set out in the legislation does not fully take into account the specifics of observation in Remote Electronic Voting. The new model of observation of electronic voting involves the adoption of relevant guarantees to achieve the goals of the observation.

The modern electronic voting system is an interconnected set of rules, methods, processes, tools and technologies, as well as legal norms that ensure and regulate the remote legitimate will of authorized users (voters). This article proposes, investigates, and verifies by physical prototyping the two-tier architecture of the electronic blockchain voting system. The lower (first) level enables all components of the electronic identification process to be fulfilled by existing systems such as BankID, MobileID, electronic signature, and the like. This will ensure interoperability of electronic voting, inheritance of already implemented national information systems, in particular, of the national system of electronic confidential services, reproducibility of the results of physical prototyping of blockchain voting. The upper (second) level is intended for the implementation of the expression of votes and the counting of votes, with the provision of independent control over the correctness of the compilation of voter lists; the possibility of anonymous voting only by those who are entitled to it; the invariability and irrevocability of the results of the will; ease and transparency of checking the correctness of the vote count and the like. The obtained results of physical prototyping make it possible to confirm the validity and weight of the developed architecture, its ability to meet the basic requirements of decentralized electronic voting, the requirements of information and functional security and reliability of information technologies. The practical implementation of the developed blockchain voting architecture will increase trust in information resources and services (which is especially relevant for government agencies) and will reduce time and overhead; will make impossible the intervention of centralized institutions and possible corruption; will increase the reliability of information storage and the quality of services provided.

This paper presents a study of vulnerabilities, risks, considerations and securities that can occur in a system of electronic voting in an election process of any authority. It is proposed to make an analysis as an electronic voting system can impersonate the vote traditional manual that is used for several decades in all cities of the world, these systems must ensure the integrity and proper use of the data and information obtained, but some occasions not taken into account the security considerations that are necessary in this class of systems. For this, an analysis of the security provided by electronic voting system is made as well as the vulnerabilities that may occur during the election process and some considerations to consider about electronic voting.

Traditionally, electronic voting has relied on a centralized method of administration. The database and the system are both under the jurisdiction of the system's central administration, which oversees the voting process. As a result, issues like database manipulation and duplicate voting may arise, whether accidentally or purposefully. Permissionless blockchain technology has helped overcome many of these issues; however, since the basic consensus technique of such blockchains demands particular computer resources for each voting operation, they are not ideal for new voting systems. Power consumption, efficiency, and system latency all suffer as a result. These issues may be alleviated in part if electronic voting technologies are used. By using corporate blockchain technology, this research presents an electronic voting system that is very reliable and secures the secret vote. It also discusses some of the frequent security and dependability challenges of electronic voting system solutions, such as a flexible network setup.

Many have long aimed to create a safe electronic voting system that maintains the confidentiality and integrity of traditional voting methods while using the convenience and openness of modern technology. Ballot paper or electronic voting machines are the current voting schemes in every nation, and democratic voting is a significant event in every country. Problems with these procedures abound, including lack of openness, poor voter turnout, vote manipulation, mistrust of the election body, forgery of unique identification (voter ID card), delays in disseminating results, and, most importantly, security breaches. Prioritizing the security of digital voting is of utmost importance when contemplating implementing a digital voting system. The article assesses the objective of building a blockchain-based e-voting system [BC-E-VOT] that uses digital voting technology. Electronic voting methods that leverage the distributed ledger attract much attention because they can make digital voting more transparent, secure, and honest. As shown in this research, a successful strategy for electronic voting may be achieved by using Blockchain's cryptographic underpinnings and transparency. Due to its complete transparency, the suggested approach satisfies the essential criteria for electronic voting systems. Since Blockchain employs a decentralized mechanism for data storage rather than storing all of the data in one central place, it becomes challenging to tamper with the data when utilizing this technology to build a decentralized application. By creating a decentralized system using the WSN platform, a third party is no longer needed to oversee the election's access control. This article provides a system for electronic voting that guarantees privacy, trustworthiness, and security. The suggested approach is practical and secure, according to the findings.

Conventional electronic voting systems use a centralized scheme. A central administration of these systems manages the entire voting process and has partial or total control over the database and the system itself. This creates some problems, accidental or intentional, such as possible manipulation of the database and double voting. Many of these problems have been solved thanks to permissionless blockchain technologies in new voting systems; however, the classic consensus method of such blockchains requires specific computing power during each voting operation. This has a significant impact on power consumption, compromises the efficiency and increases the system latency. However, using a permissioned blockchain improves efficiency and reduces system energy consumption, mainly due to the elimination of the typical consensus protocols used by public blockchains. The use of smart contracts provides a secure mechanism to guarantee the accuracy of the voting result and make the counting procedure public and protected against fraudulent actions, and contributes to preserving the anonymity of the votes. Its adoption in electronic voting systems can help mitigate part of these problems. Therefore, this paper proposes a system that ensures high reliability by applying enterprise blockchain technology to electronic voting, securing the secret ballot. In addition, a flexible network configuration is presented, discussing how the solution addresses some of the security and reliability issues commonly faced by electronic voting system solutions.

The present paper considers national electronic voting system problems in Ukraine, principles of construction and development prospects. Electronic voting refers to a way to exercise will, in which the voting, counting, and publication of the results processes are carried out by electronic means and systems. Most existing voting systems are built on centralized principles and this allows providing certain advantages, for example, high controllability of the system, its reliability, and autonomy. However, hierarchical systems also have significant drawbacks, in particular, single decision center and centralized storage leads to vulnerability to cyberattacks on them. Also it should be noted, that in centralized systems due to the abuse of administrative resources distortions of the results of expression of will are possible. This is the biggest threat to the modern democratic information society. Research, development, and implementation of new technologies of electronic voting, which would make it impossible to intervene and distort the results of the will through decentralization while maintaining all the system qualities for safety and reliability are promising. This article proposes particular proposals for architecture substantiating as well as a basic model and interaction protocols of a decentralized electronic blockchain voting system. A two-level blockchain voting architecture is proposed, researched and verified through physical prototyping. Its implementation will increase confidence in information resources and services (which is especially important for government agencies) will reduce time and overhead costs; make it impossible for centralized institutions to intervene and possible corrupt practices; will increase the reliability of information storage and the quality of services provided.

This article aims to examine the legal and policy challenges associated with adopting an electronic voting (e-voting) system in Nigeria’s electoral process. Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, has for many years been held down by issues of election fraud, thuggery, violence as seen in past manual elections in the country. The article argues that, if properly implemented and financed, e-election offers great promise and potential as the panacea for voter fraud in Nigeria’s electoral system. First, it examines the theoretical, legal and constitutional basis for e-voting. Second, drawing lessons from other jurisdictions, it analyses practical challenges for the implementation and adoption of an e-voting system in Nigeria. These challenges include the possible compromise of e-voting devices, by viruses or other malicious software; manipulation by people with privileged access to the system, either system developers, system administrators or malicious hackers; denial-of-service attacks (attacks that result in the e-voting facility being disabled or otherwise unavailable for voters to use); lack of adequate supervision mechanisms; and the difficulties of proving electronic attacks in courts of law among other things. Many of these problems are beyond the contemplation of and, therefore, are unaddressed by Nigeria’s Electoral Act, making the law currently incapable and unsuitable to effectively respond to these problems. The article calls for a reform of the Nigerian Electoral Act to better address peculiar legal and constitutional challenges associated with e-voting systems.Keywords: E-elections, Hacking, Democracy, Election Piloting

This paper addresses the democracy-oriented legal and constitutional requirements that an electronic voting system has to comply with. Its scope covers every election or decision-making process, which takes place through voting. Due mainly to the digital divide and to current technological limitation, electronic voting cannot be proposed as a universal means of voting but rather as an alternative option, supplemental to traditional voting means. An electronic voting process must be designed in such a way as to guarantee the general, free, equal and secret character of elections. In a democratic context an electronic voting system should respect and ensure attributes and properties such as transparency, verifiability, accountability, security and accuracy. Only then can it foster and promote the participation of the citizens, the legitimacy and the democratic transaction of the election process.KeywordsSecurityelectronic votingvoting technologiesuser requirementslegal requirementssecure information systems

In order to define requirements for electronic voting systems it is necessary to understand electronic voting in general and in particular its possible implementations. Thus, this chapter provides an overview and classification of existing (paper-based and electronic) election forms, including multiple channel voting. The second part of this chapter presents the main differences between paper-based elections and electronic voting. The next two parts analysis in detail those forms of electronic voting relevant for further discussions in this book: Thus, the third part of this chapter proposes and discusses electronic voting machines (direct recording electronic voting machines and the Digital Election Pen). The fourth part focuses on remote electronic voting systems (including possible implementations of voter authentication, the secrecy of the vote, and the client-side voting software).

This research paper examines the implementation of an electronic voting application using blockchain technology, specifically employing Solidity and Ethereum smart contracts. It explores how blockchain can enhance election processes by ensuring security, immutability, and transparency in electronic voting systems

Blockchain verifies security using a distributed mechanism. For several new and developing products and services, blockchain technology is touted as a game-changer. Providing a distributed architecture to manage and sustain an open voting system would be the aim of such a plan. A system called blockchain stores data in a way that makes it difficult or almost impossible to make changes to it. The sharing economy may be benefited by a very wide variety of applications made possible by blockchain technology. That will be used to quantify how blockchain technology may be used to facilitate distributed electronic voting. The suggested solution implements a voting mechanism using the Aadhar API on an Ethereum network on a blockchain platform. Electronic voting is expected to promote openness, and voters are required to lessen dishonesty and irregularities in the voting procedures. Voters will be able to cast their ballots from home by using this technology. The technology seeks to improve voting process transparency and strengthen fraud prevention by supplanting the conventional pen and paper method. Key Words: Blockchain, Distributed General Ledger, Ethereum, Smart Contracts, P2P network, Consensus Algorithm, PoW Algorithm, Cryptography, Voter Privacy, Trustless Environment, Electrical integrity.

Recent developments in the socio-political landscape on the African continent suggest that there is still a pre-dominant weakness in the governance systems of many countries. This is traceable to the process by which leaders emerge in these countries often through coup d'etats, revolutionary struggles, but more recently through flawed electoral processes. In most cases where elections have been undertaken, dissatisfaction of citizens with the outcomes have been a common result, due to both real and perceived vote frauds. This has led to colossal losses in terms of human lives, infrastructure, tourism opportunities and even ostracism of countries. To increase public confidence, citizen participation, and strengthen the electoral process in African countries, this paper proposes the widespread use of electronic voting machines and systems in the conduct of elections using Nigeria as case study. The proposed framework relies on the existence of Nigeria's global communications satellite, NigComSat as well as the country's growing IT-literate population while emphasizing simplicity without compromising the security of system processes. A deliberate policy to improve electricity supply and internet connectivity across the country will go a long way in overcoming the major infrastructure constraint against this framework. Furthermore, growing voter consciousness and political participation in the country is expected to result in a higher demand for improved transparency in the electoral process over time, a demand which the proposed electronic voting can potentially meet.

The secret nature of elections is of major importance to guarantee free and democratic elections. Due to it's impor- tance it has to be enforced even against the voter himself. I.e. every (electronic) voting system has to ensure that the voter does not gain any receipt that enables him to prove his voting decision to others. In this paper we present a formal model addressing the security requirement of receipt-freeness for electronic voting systems. This formal model can bee seen as a step towards a formal security model which enables the Common Criteria evaluation and certification of online voting products according to Evaluation Assurance Level EAL 5 or higher. Thus, it can help to strengthen the trust of the voters in the voting system. Keywords-Electronic Voting, Ballot Secrecy, Receipt-Freeness, Formal Security Model, Common Criteria

The article examines the concept of electronic voting and counting technologies as well as their increasing use around the world. E-voting is viewed as a mechanism for expressing the will of the people by electronic means and as an automated process of counting votes (without mediation), which is designed to simplify the voting procedure and potentially increase voter turnout. Electronic voting is featured in the article as one of tools for e-democracy. European legal standards for electronic voting are analyzed based on the experience accumulated by the member states of the Council of Europe that have used electronic voting in recent years and the lessons learned. The potential and prospects of e-voting system implementation for Ukrainian citizens are discussed in light of the steps taken by the Ukrainian authorities to create preconditions for the introduction of the electronic voting system, legislative initiatives and the existing legal framework that can be used for further legal support of electronic voting in Ukraine. Special attention is paid to the role and influence of the main stakeholders on the process of digitalizing elections. The introduction of a novel element into the electoral process has predictably provoked widespread debates about the benefits and risks of electronic voting in the short and long run. In conclusion, domestic legislation and practice in the field of e-voting are generalized and recommendations are given on the prospects for the implementation of electronic voting in Ukraine. Due to the complexity of e-voting implementation, it is limited to pilot testing at present. Based on the experience of other countries, it has been determined that electronic voting should be used in parallel with the traditional expression of will. The introduction of new voting technologies should be preceded by the comprehensive and extended preparation for the implementation in terms of the following areas of public policy: technological, legal, educational and communicative.