Bringing transparency and trust to elections: using blockchains for the transmission and tabulation of results

Abstract

The transmission and tabulation of results are critical steps in the election process. If election results are provided quickly and transparently, they may inspire trust and confidence in the overall management of the contest. On the contrary, the late and questionable delivery of results might raise concerns and suspicion. In some cases, improper counting and tabulation procedures have brought candidates to question election results and even spurred long periods of violence. In this paper, we explore the potential of blockchain technology to enhance the counting and tabulation procedures during elections. Blockchains are distributed ledgers technologies whose transactions are protected cryptographically. It means that their contents cannot be tampered with nor modified in the long term. We argue that blockchain technology meets the requirements for electronic transmission and consolidation of election results. To prove so, we have implemented a proof of concept with a smart contract running on an Ethereum blockchain that registers the address of several polling stations and records the tally sheets that these submit at the end of the election. We also resort to the smart contract for the automatic and accurate consolidation of the election results once they have been submitted.