Blockchain based voting system

Hemanth S, Pavan Kumar N, Vineeth J

Information science and engineering, Siddaganga institute of technology,

Tumkur

Abstract- The current electronic voting system is problem to huge time consumption for voting that
shown to have quite some number of issues which cannot be addressed till date.
can lead to widespread political unrest in a The purpose is to cultivate the use of blockchain
country. It is vital for a democracy to have a for the above-mentioned problems in the voting
transparent voting system that must have the least system. Blockchain alleviates the problems of
number of obstacles for a voter to vote. expensiveness, vulnerability and time
In this project, we are going to leverage the consumption by a large extent and provides
opensource Blockchain technology to propose a security which is very difficult to tamper with.
design for a new method of voting system that The blockchain technology decentralises the data
could be used in local or national or any other and brings about the transparency which is a
custom elections. The Blockchain-based system much-needed aspect for the elections.
will be secure, reliable, and anonymous, and will
help increase the number of voters as well as the
trust of people in the voting system. II. LITERATURE SURVEY

I. INTRODUCTION In [1] Ahmed Ben Ayed, the author proposes the

generation of hash for a block using Secure Hash
The twentieth century has modernised the voting
Algorithm (SHA-256) designed by NSA (national
system with the arrival of electronic voting
security agency). The SHA-256 will take any size
machines which supersedes the traditional ballot
plaintext as an input and encrypt it to a 256-byte
system in numerous ways. Although the e-voting
binary value. The SHA-256 is always a 256-bit
system is much more modernised than the earlier
binary value, and it is a strictly one way function.
ballot system of voting, it does have its own
vulnerabilities and hindrances. The electronic
voting machine itself is expensive and upon that
there lies the expense of setting up security in the
voting areas, the human labour for conducting the
election and the huge prospect of the error in vote
count by human mistake. Then there lies the
hurdle of possible tampering of electronic
machine to rig the election itself and the unsolved

In [2] Alperen Kantarcı et al. they propose a changing votes are totally blocked. When citizen
system that will be consisting of nodes which cast a ballot, e-government system will be
are closed to human interference. Any input that informed without revealing any information
cannot be considered as vote will be ignored in about vote. Then, e-government system marks
this system. For such a system, stealing votes or that person as voted. Since the system takes
 electorate data from e-government, it is not blockchains, the network is divided into three
possible for a marked person to vote again. They abstract tiers, National, Constituency and Local.
propose a system that has a leveled structure. For voting, a vote blockchain which keeps record
There will be different number of levels in that of a vote casted by a person/voter and the
system according to necessities of the country. authentication of a user requires three distinct
To provide a fast, consistent, and secure system, pieces of evidence; their identification number,
system is designed in a leveled architecture. the password supplied on registration, their ballot
card which contains a QR code. Once the
vote(transaction) is casted, it is passed onto the
constituency node and eventually to all peers/data
blocks until the whole network is updated.

In [3] Andrew Barnes et al. they propose a system

that
that does not entirely replace the current voting
but rather integrates within a current system. For
registration, a voter blockchain is used to keep a III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
record of the voter information where their We use smart contract to handle blockchain
proposed service utilizes both postal based forms voting network where a smart contract is a self-
as well as web forms. This information includes operating program on blockchain that
their national identity number, postal address, automatically executes when specific conditions
optional email address and a password. All this are met.
information then forms a transaction for the user
agreeing with the government that they are asking The phases in the system are,
to vote. Authentication Phase, where the user will have to
The network is a multi-tiered, decentralized log in to the voting system using his credentials.
infrastructure which houses the two distinct The system will check all data entered by the user.
If the data matches with a corresponding voter id,
then that user can vote.
Voting phase where, voters will have to choose
and vote for their desired candidate.
Securing the votes i.e., encryption where after
casting of vote, the system will generate a node
that contains the voter’s unique number along
with voters' information as well as the hash of the
previous block.
After a block is created, the information is
recorded in the corresponding Blockchain of the
corresponding contestant and each block gets
linked to the previously cast vote.
After the election is over the results will be
displayed to all the voters by the admin.
The data flow diagrams for the system are,

Figure 2

IV. THE PROCESS

At the start of voting process, the user interface
(either web/mobile app) will be asking whether
the person is a contestant or a voter which will be
handled by the admin. If by any error a voter tries
to vote without admin starting the election it will
return that election has not started and will be
immediately sent back to wait till the election
starts.
Figure 1 Admin will be given the responsibility of starting
the election and shortlisting the candidate who are
interested in participating the election. The person
interested to contest and to vote in the election
must provide details to the admin. After all the
participants have registered, admin starts the
election process.
Voter has to login to the platform and need to
specify the distinct identity which will be
different for all the voters (i.e., voter id). If the
distinct identity produced by the voter is invalid, mechanism and data can be provided however it is
then a message will be sent saying the identity wanted. Thus, this system is vulnerable.
produced by that voter is invalid and will be
rejected to vote. If the voter has already voted and In this system, whole voting information are held
is trying to vote again, then that voter will be at the blockchain so, voting information can be
rejected as his vote will have already been reachable instantly at any time after it is
recorded in the blockchain ledger. synchronized. So, it will not be a problem to
Upon producing the valid distinct identity, the explain results of the election, and lots of time
voter will be allowed to cast the vote. The voter that is being spent to count votes will be saved.
will be able to view all the contestants standing This will change the old and ineffective system
for election and will vote for the desired and bring a modern and effective system to
candidate. After the vote is casted, the vote is Turkey, and lead to save lots of energy and
encrypted making it very difficult to manipulate money.
it. After encryption, each vote is converted to a
data block. Apart from the previously mentioned risks, in
Each vote is converted to a peer or a block which case of a disaster citizen who had to vote on the
will consist of hash and hash of the previous voting machine that has damaged or unavailable
block. Hashing is done by SHA 256 algorithm. to server can be distributed to the nearest voting
Hash is treated as an address of a present block centers with legal inspections of the supreme
and previous hash is address of previous block, committee of elections. Citizens who vote on the
where it will be acting as a link formed from one voting center that has any problem due to
block to the another like a chain. If manipulation technical problems and disasters can cast their
of vote(i.e., peer/block) is attempted and is votes in different voting center. Although disaster
successful somehow, the hash of the blocks will can damage to the voting machine, blockchain
change and eventually the manipulation of all the keeps secure all the casted votes. Therefore, even
blocks has to be done to be successful, which is in extreme cases during the election day, elections
both time and energy consuming. can be completed safely without any doubt.
After a block is created it is added to the
blockchain of the corresponding contestant that is,
separate blockchains are created for each VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
contestants and the knowledge of which voter
In retrospect, the flaws of current E voting system
casted for whom will never be visible by anyone
is increasing significantly in the aspects of
in the blockchain network.
expense, security, time and consumption. Most
Based on the numbers of nodes connected in a
importantly the inability to provide transparency
blockchain (of a contestant), the winner will be
to the citizens is the biggest problem in current
declared by the admin.
voting system. With the arrival of blockchain
technology, all of these hurdles of the current
system could be avoided and with its
V. ANALYSIS decentralized nature, everything will be
transparent in the system and the prospect of
With the use of proposed e-voting system, there human error ceases to exist.
will be a system that can be modified for each The blockchain technology is not just limited to
election easily. Because the system is designed voting system, it can be applied in various other
considering candidates at the main voting fields like healthcare, banking sector, supply
chain, asset management and many more.
Walmart is already using the blockchain VIII. REFERENCES
technology for the purpose of tracking the supply [1]Ahmed Ben Ayed, “A CONCEPTUAL
SECURE BLOCKCHAIN- BASED
chain and sooner than later it will be inculcated in ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM”,
many sectors which brings about the much- International Journal of Network Security &
Its Applications (IJNSA), Vol.9, No.3, May
needed aspect, credibility. 2017

VII. REQUIREMENT GATHERING [2] Rumeysa Bulut,Alperen Kantarcı,Safa Keskin,

Şerif Bahtiyar, “Blockchain-Based Electronic
Ethereum (platform): Voting System for Elections in Turkey”,
Istanbul Technical University
It is a decentralized open source blockchain
featuring smart contract functionality. [3] Andrew Barnes, Christopher Brake and
Thomas Perry, “Digital Voting with the use of
Blockchain Technology”, Plymouth
University
Solidity (programming language):
It is an object-oriented language used for writing [4] ] Friðrik Þ. Hjálmarsson,Gunnlaugur
K.Hreiðarsson, “Blockchain-Based E-Voting
smart contract System”, Reykjavik University, Iceland
[5] https://101blockchains.com/introduction-to-
Remix (IDE): blockchain-features/
It is IDE used as open source web and desktop
application.