Blockchain; E-voting; Off-chaining; Privacy-preserving; Smart contracts; Zk-SNARK; ZoKrates; Block-chain; Decentralised; E-Voting; E-voting systems; Large scale election; Privacy preserving; Zero knowledge; Zokrate; Software; Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality; Computer Networks and Communications
Abstract :
[en] Electronic voting has the potential to revolutionize democratic participation; however, conventional systems face challenges in ensuring transparency and bear risks associated with centralization. Blockchain technology presents a novel approach that mitigates many of these issues, yet scalability remains an obstacle for blockchain-based e-voting systems. This paper introduces a unique, decentralized e-voting scheme that employs zero-knowledge off-chain computations to efficiently handle large-scale elections while maintaining a constant on-chain storage requirement. This scheme promotes transparency, privacy, universal verifiability, and weak receipt-freeness. We introduce the innovative concept of ’ballot boxes’ to offset voters’ transaction costs. The scheme's key feature is its capacity to manage large-scale elections, leveraging the positive attributes of blockchain technology. A proof-of-concept has been implemented on the Ethereum test network to validate the scheme's viability, thus paving a promising path toward scalable, secure, and privacy-preserving e-voting systems.
Warf, B., Voting technologies and residual ballots in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Polit Geogr 25:5 (2006), 530–556.
Karp, J.A., Nai, A., Norris, P., Dial ‘F'for fraud: Explaining citizens suspicions about elections. Elect Stud 53 (2018), 11–19.
Taş, R., Tanrıöver, Ö.Ö., A systematic review of challenges and opportunities of blockchain for E-voting. Symmetry, 12(8), 2020, 1328.
Agate, V., De Paola, A., Ferraro, P., Re, G.L., Morana, M., SecureBallot: A secure open source e-voting system. J Netw Comput Appl, 191, 2021, 103165.
Kulyk, O., Neumann, S., Human factors in coercion resistant internet voting–A review of existing solutions and open challenges. E-Vote-ID 2020, 2020, 189.
Shinde, S.S., Shukla, S., Chitre, D., Secure E-voting using homomorphic technology. Int J Emerg Technol Adv Eng 3:8 (2013), 203–206.
Zhao, Z., Chan, T.-H.H., How to vote privately using bitcoin. International conference on information and communications security, 2015, Springer, 82–96.
Grossman, W.M., Why machines are bad at counting votes. 2009 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/apr/30/e-voting-electronic-polling-systems.
Safi, M., Chan, G., NSW election result could be challenged over iVote security flaw. 2015 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/23/nsw-election-result-could-be-challenged-over-ivote-security-flaw.
NDI, M., The constitutionality of electronic voting in Germany. 2013 https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/constitutionality-of-electronic-voting-germany.
Monrat, A.A., Schelén, O., Andersson, K., A survey of blockchain from the perspectives of applications, challenges, and opportunities. IEEE Access 7 (2019), 117134–117151.
Jafar, U., Aziz, M.J.A., Shukur, Z., Blockchain for electronic voting system—review and open research challenges. Sensors, 21(17), 2021, 5874.
Hao, W., Zeng, J., Dai, X., Xiao, J., Hua, Q.-S., Chen, H., Li, K.-C., Jin, H., Towards a trust-enhanced blockchain p2p topology for enabling fast and reliable broadcast. IEEE Trans Netw Serv Manag 17:2 (2020), 904–917.
Hardwick, F.S., Gioulis, A., Akram, R.N., Markantonakis, K., E-voting with blockchain: An e-voting protocol with decentralisation and voter privacy. 2018 IEEE international conference on internet of things (IThings) and IEEE green computing and communications (GreenCom) and IEEE cyber, physical and social computing (CPSCom) and IEEE smart data (SmartData), 2018, IEEE, 1561–1567.
McCorry, P., Shahandashti, S.F., Hao, F., A smart contract for boardroom voting with maximum voter privacy. International conference on financial cryptography and data security, 2017, Springer, 357–375.
Alvi, S.T., Uddin, M.N., Islam, L., Ahamed, S., DVTChain: A blockchain-based decentralized mechanism to ensure the security of digital voting system voting system. J King Saud Univ-Comput Inf Sci 34:9 (2022), 6855–6871.
Taş, R., Tanrıöver, Ö.Ö., A manipulation prevention model for blockchain-based E-voting systems. Secur Commun Netw, 2021, 2021.
Khan, K.M., Arshad, J., Khan, M.M., Investigating performance constraints for blockchain based secure e-voting system. Future Gener Comput Syst 105 (2020), 13–26.
Khader, D., Smyth, B., Ryan, P.Y.A., Hao, F., A fair and robust voting system by broadcast. Kripp, M.J., Volkamer, M., Grimm, R., (eds.) 5th international conference on electronic voting 2012 (EVOTE2012), 2012, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Bonn, 285–299.
Khazaei, S., Rezaei-Aliabadi, M., A rigorous security analysis of a decentralized electronic voting protocol in the universal composability framework. J Inf Secur Appl 43 (2018), 99–109, 10.1016/j.jisa.2018.10.010 URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221421261830231X.
Juels, A., Catalano, D., Jakobsson, M., Coercion-resistant electronic elections. Towards trustworthy elections, 2010, Springer, 37–63.
Androulaki, E., Barger, A., Bortnikov, V., Cachin, C., Christidis, K., De Caro, A., Enyeart, D., Ferris, C., Laventman, G., Manevich, Y., et al. Hyperledger fabric: a distributed operating system for permissioned blockchains. Proceedings of the thirteenth eurosys conference, 2018, 1–15.
Spadafora, C., Longo, R., Sala, M., A coercion-resistant blockchain-based E-voting protocol with receipts. Adv Math Commun, 2021.
Li, Y., Susilo, W., Yang, G., Yu, Y., Liu, D., Du, X., Guizani, M., A blockchain-based self-tallying voting protocol in decentralized IoT. IEEE Trans Dependable Secure Comput, 2020.
Panja, S., Bag, S., Hao, F., Roy, B., A smart contract system for decentralized Borda count voting. IEEE Trans Eng Manage 67:4 (2020), 1323–1339.
Li, H., Li, Y., Yu, Y., Wang, B., Chen, K., A blockchain-based traceable self-tallying E-voting protocol in AI era. IEEE Trans Netw Sci Eng, 2020.
Alshehri, A., Baza, M., Srivastava, G., Rajeh, W., Alrowaily, M., Almusali, M., Privacy-preserving E-voting system supporting score voting using blockchain. Appl Sci, 13(2), 2023, 1096.
Zaghloul, E., Li, T., Ren, J., D-BAME: Distributed blockchain-based anonymous mobile electronic voting. IEEE Internet Things J, 2021.
Zhang, S., Wang, L., Xiong, H., Chaintegrity: blockchain-enabled large-scale e-voting system with robustness and universal verifiability. Int J Inf Secur 19:3 (2020), 323–341.
Abuidris, Y., Kumar, R., Yang, T., Onginjo, J., Secure large-scale E-voting system based on blockchain contract using a hybrid consensus model combined with sharding. Etri J 43:2 (2021), 357–370.
Song, J.-G., Moon, S.-J., Jang, J.-W., A scalable implementation of anonymous voting over ethereum blockchain. Sensors, 21(12), 2021, 3958.
Seifelnasr, M., Galal, H.S., Youssef, A.M., Scalable open-vote network on ethereum. International conference on financial cryptography and data security, 2020, Springer, 436–450.
Huang, J., He, D., Chen, Y., Khan, M.K., Luo, M., A blockchain-based self-tallying voting protocol with maximum voter privacy. IEEE Trans Netw Sci Eng 9:5 (2022), 3808–3820.
Pedersen, T.P., A threshold cryptosystem without a trusted party. Davies, D.W., (eds.) Advances in cryptology — EUROCRYPT ’91, 1991, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 522–526.
Parno, B., Howell, J., Gentry, C., Raykova, M., Pinocchio: Nearly practical verifiable computation. 2013 IEEE symposium on security and privacy, 2013, IEEE, 238–252.
Eberhardt, J., Tai, S., Zokrates-scalable privacy-preserving off-chain computations. 2018 IEEE international conference on internet of things (IThings) and IEEE green computing and communications (GreenCom) and IEEE cyber, physical and social computing (CPSCom) and IEEE smart data (SmartData), 2018, IEEE, 1084–1091.
Boo, E., Kim, J., Ko, J., LiteZKP: Lightening zero-knowledge proof-based blockchains for IoT and edge platforms. IEEE Syst J, 2021.
Yang, X., Li, W., A zero-knowledge-proof-based digital identity management scheme in blockchain. Comput Secur, 99, 2020, 102050.
Dorsala, M.R., Sastry, V., Chapram, S., Fair payments for verifiable cloud services using smart contracts. Comput Secur, 90, 2020, 101712.
Bowe, S., Gabizon, A., Green, M.D., A multi-party protocol for constructing the public parameters of the pinocchio zk-SNARK. International conference on financial cryptography and data security, 2018, Springer, 64–77.
WhiteHat, B., Baylina, J., Bellés, M., Baby Jubjub elliptic curve. 2019 Repository at https://github.com/barryWhiteHat/babyjubjubecc.
Albrecht, M., Grassi, L., Rechberger, C., Roy, A., Tiessen, T., MiMC: Efficient encryption and cryptographic hashing with minimal multiplicative complexity. International conference on the theory and application of cryptology and information security, 2016, Springer, 191–219.
