Secure blockchain-based electronic voting mechanism

Abstract

Many countries have strived to popularise electronic voting (e-voting), but owing to various security concerns, large-scale elections are still invariably held using paper ballots. Electronic voting systems must find solutions to various issues with authentication, data privacy and integrity, transparency, and verifiability. On the other hand, Blockchain technology offers an innovative solution to many of these problems. In this study, we constructed a private blockchain network with a large number of nodes, which is only accessible to the relevant voters. Because of its decentralised design, the system is robust against attacks by malicious actors. The security of the system was enhanced using an elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem-based blind multi-document signcryption mechanism. As this mechanism can be used to blindly sign and encrypt multiple voting documents in a single pass, it will minimise redundant signing processes and thus improve efficiency. Furthermore, a self-certification mechanism was used in lieu of centralised certificate servers, so that the voters can participate in the computation of public and private keys. In summary, we designed an electronic voting mechanism that is sufficiently secure for practical purposes, which will improve trust in e-voting, and reduce the costs associated with vote checking.