Crypto-voting, a Blockchain based e-Voting System

Francesco Fusco

, Maria Ilaria Lunesu

, Filippo Eros Pani

and Andrea Pinna

NET SERVICE SPA, Via Montegrappa, 4/d, Bologna, Italy

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Piazza dArmi, Cagliari, Italy

Keywords:

e-Voting, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, Shamirs Secret Sharing.

Abstract:

In most of the electing contexts, the secrecy of votes is mandatory. This constraint is unnecessary in the phase

of signatures collection which, by nature, are publicly available. This phase precedes, for instance, the popular

initiative referendums, or the composition of the electoral rolls. In past, many electronic election systems (or

e-voting systems) failed because they were not able to guarantee the total security respect to the vote privacy

protection, especially in the long-medium term and in the cases of brute force attacks. The purpose of this

study is the presentation and the deﬁnition of a new e-voting system named Crypto-voting. We base this

solution upon the Shamirs secret sharing approach, implemented using the blockchain technology. We use

this technology to integrate the management procedures of the phases and events of an election. These events

include the set-up of the system, the distribution of credentials, the voting, the collection of ballot papers, the

counting of preferences, the publication of results, and so on. In addition, our system aims to improve the

methods of traceability and audit about voting operations, with no middleman.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the ﬁeld of public elections there are several cri-

tical issues, for example relating to the counting and

veriﬁcation of votes, which are managed by involving

different ﬁgures and equipment in the typical phases

of voting process. Infact, the vote represents a funda-

mental element of any collaboration between people,

with several methods, online voting, raising hands to

ballot boxes and so on. At this stage the idea of using

blockchain technology to distribute an electoral regis-

ter open to all citizens is becoming increasingly popu-

lar. Blockchain represents a means of recording and

verifying documents transparently distributed among

users of a selected network.

While votes are usually recorded, organized, counted

and veriﬁed by a central authority, a blockchain-based

electronic voting system could decentralize controls,

making voters take over certain tasks while retaining

a copy of the electoral register.

This would lead to the elimination of illegitimate vo-

tes because the copies of the voters are a voting his-

tory that can not be changed and whose changes can

be easily veriﬁed. An illegitimate vote, already regis-

tered or associated with an invalid register, could not

therefore be added because the other voters would be

able to see that it is not compatible with the establis-

hed rules.

Furthermore nowadays companies and administrati-

ons have to face an increasingly rapid need to make

decisions that corresponds to an increasingly fast

and massive acquisition of feedbacks and documents.

This can lead to a loss of collegiality and democracy

and a concentration of responsibilities towards one

person in charge. To avoid this, new tools for parti-

cipation in decision-making activities that are in step

with the times are needed.

In this scenario we introduce Crypto-voting. It is a

blockchain tecnology based system, that represents a

valid/useful mean for simplifying the decision process

of companies and to support the government of bu-

siness associations. It could represent an easy solu-

tion in all of situations related to the real involvement

of all stakeholders interested in the decision-making

process.

As signiﬁcant examples we can mention some cases

in which Cripto-voting is a support in the voting pro-

cess, the former is when participants are responsi-

ble for a network of Small and Medium Enterprises

(SMEs) called upon to make a decision regarding a

common strategy. The second when participants are

the subjects internal to a Public Administration (PA)

or to a speciﬁc enterprise that will have, for example,

to elect the representative person or the management

Fusco, F., Lunesu, M., Pani, F. and Pinna, A.

Crypto-voting, a Blockchain based e-Voting System.

DOI: 10.5220/0006962102230227

In Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2018) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 223-227

ISBN: 978-989-758-330-8

223

members. Finally, when the vote could concern citi-

zens who are asked for an opinion on the functioning

of the PA or, in order to carry out a market survey, and

customers (or tourists) who are asked for feedback on

the services they have used or desired.

According to our idea Crypto-voting it is placed

as a leverage of change with the end to achieve the

objective to reinforce the Information and Commu-

nication Technologies (TIC or ICT) applications for

e-government, e-learning, e- inclusion, e-culture and

e-health. The idea could be particularly innovative

in the cybersecurity ﬁeld for consumer world (Go-

vernment to Consumer (G2C)), with a combination

of integrated and complementary data encryption and

storage technologies and a platform for the represen-

tation and use of open and scalable data. Moreover,

the proposed e-voting system could favorite the en-

hancement of Open Data, also in economics terms, in

particular in case in which the elections are related to

market surveys.

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2

shows an overview of related work. Section 3 we

propose our approach. Lastly, Section 4 includes the

conclusions and some reasoning about our work.

2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED

WORK

The project idea presented in this work can be placed

in the framework of the e-voting systems. The study

of the state of the art about already existent systems

for e-voting and in general about the rules which regu-

late the protection of results, encourages the research

of an alternative method based on the latest innovative

technologies. In the case of this proposal, we want to

exploit the peculiarities of the blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology is known for being the basis

of cryptocurrencies, such as the the Bitcoin system

(Nakamoto, 2008). The Bitcoin was the ﬁrst cryp-

tocurrency system introduced and it is currently the

most important cryptocurrency in terms of capitali-

zation. Blockchain is a distributed and decentralized

data structure which records in chronological order a

speciﬁc typology of data called transactions. Block-

chain users interact with the blockchain by sending

transactions requests within a peer-to-peer network.

A transaction execution leads to the change of the

state of the blockchain. It is possible to deﬁne the

blockchain state as the set of information associated

to each user’s account (wallet) in a certain time.

The changes are collected and recorded within a

block, whose data is processed in order to calculate

a ﬁngerprint called hash. The hash code of previous

block is also included in the current block hash cal-

culation, to make the whole chain actually unchan-

geable. Thanks to its technical characteristics, the

blockchain offers the security and transparency requi-

rements that so far lacked in the electronic voting sys-

tems adopted in various countries. It provides a toke-

nized trust mechanism, digital and decentralized, for

generating secure data, which potentially preserves

the anonymity of the participants but remains open

to public inspection. Applied to the voting process,

the blockchain technology guarantees that the votes

are accurately, transparently, permanently and safely

recorded.

Most of the largest and most popular blockchain

systems (i.e Bitcoin and Ethereum) are public. It me-

ans that all transactions stored in these blockchains

are publicly available. It is not possible to hide the

data set of each transaction that includes, the body of

the message (that is the IT description of the opera-

tion to be performed), the sender and the recipient. In

general, we speak of pseudo-anonymity because the

sender and recipient are known in terms of an alpha-

numeric code generally called ”address”. Using tra-

cing techniques could be possible infer their identity

(Pinna et al., 2018).

The literature offers various studies still ongoing

on the use of blockchain technology for voting sys-

tems. The characteristics of this technology allow, in

principle, to create decentralized and automatic vo-

ting systems. It is also true that the scientiﬁc research

is still far from reaching a deﬁnitive solution to create

an electronic voting system able to completely replace

traditional voting systems. The replacement process

could involve the study and the development of solu-

tions to overcome certain critical points, such as the

guarantee of the secrecy of the voter (Khan et al.,

2018; Rubtcova and Pavenkov, 2018).

New and emerging blockchain systems put conﬁ-

dentiality and anonymity at the ﬁrst place. In parti-

cular, Zcash

is a public blockchain system that im-

plements a system for privacy protection and that co-

des transactions to hide the sender, the recipient and

the content of the message. In order to guarantee the

data integrity and prevent frauds and cheats, Zcash

uses a zero-knowledge proof called zk-SNARK (Sas-

son et al., 2014). This algorithm aims to maintain

the record of balances. Proposed solutions for voting

systems based on blokchain, are still at a prototype

stage. One of these is Vote Coin

, announced in 2014

and still under development. It is a decentralized sy-

stem of electronic voting that exploits the characteris-

tics of Zcash in order to hide the link between elector

https://z.cash/

https://votecoin.site

KMIS 2018 - 10th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

224

(or voter) and expressed vote, when deemed neces-

sary (Kappos et al., 2018).

Another system under development is Agora

(Agora Technologies, 2018), a voting platform for Di-

gital democracy, based on public blockchain and on

the sharding mechanism that protects the privacy of

the voter. They use cryptographic methods such as

the ElGamal system (Wang et al., 2018) for the pro-

tection of votes cast and a system called Neff shuff-

ling (Neff, 2001) that protects anonymity. Agora was

tested during the vote in Sierra Leone in 2018. The

concept of digital democracy is the main focus of the

Coalichain project (coalichain.io, 2018). This project

under development aims to create, in addition to vo-

ting procedures, an ecosystem to allow the interaction

between voters and representatives. The aim is to eli-

minate the communication gap between citizens and

governments. In addition, the project includes the de-

velopment of a set of services useful to make the pu-

blic service more efﬁcient by promoting the transpa-

rency and traceability of data. The Agora system is

based on the public blockchain of Ethereum.

In 2017 Spanos et al. obtained a patent (Spanos

et al., 2017), that protects the invention of an electro-

nic voting system based on blockchain that provides

the existence of a network of voting machines and a

system for the allocation of voting rights based on a

mechanism of public and private keys. In their me-

chanism, votes are expressed by scanning a barcode

using a speciﬁc device, and forwarded to a blockchain

in order to be recorded in a counting block. A spe-

cial feature of this system is the use of a Slidechain.

Slidechains allow the creation of a blockchain with

multiple branches (i.e a sidechain) and to propagate

information simultaneously in each chain that bran-

ches off from another chain, following the rules of

their custom protocol.

3 THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

We dedicate this section to the description of Crypto-

voting system a multichannel hybrid system based on

blockchain technology. The main potentiality of the

system is to allow to vote remotely, representing a

concrete beneﬁt for those voters who live far from

the seat of membership (for example, voters abroad).

Usually the remote voting operation can be done via

mobile devices or personal computers.

Thanks to Crypto-voting system it will be possible

to guarantee the continuity with the traditional voting

operation and the accessibility also to IT-illiterate.

People can vote in a traditional way reaching an

e-voting polling station. The voting operation con-

sists in marking a symbol in a ”virtual” ballot paper

showed on a ﬂat touchscreen.

Technology

To implement Crypto-voting we decided to study and

exploit the sidechain technology.

Sidechains extend the blockchain and allow the

creation of new features by avoiding both the writing

on the main blockchain (reducing costs and risks of

failure) and the need to create a new currency. Si-

dechain is based on the possibility of creating a sy-

stem based on the combined use of a main blockchain

and a subordinate blockchain that communicate with

each other according to speciﬁc synchronization crite-

ria. Typically, cryptocurrencies can be moved on the

sidechain and then return to the main chain. Crypto-

voting system intends to use a permissioned block-

chain (ie subject to authorization), in order to guaran-

tee access control without compromising the require-

ments of anonymity and conﬁdentiality.

The assumptions and motivations of the chosen

technology choices are:

• the need of a safe and reliable technology that al-

low the creation of a double transparent and public

ledger containing all voting results;

• the need of voters, supervisory authorities and

candidates to have certiﬁed, transparent and ve-

riﬁable information related to all voting process

steps.

The disruptive idea of Crypto-voting is the use of

two linked blockchain, one-way pegged sidechain

The ﬁrst sidechain records eligible voters and record

the voting operation of voters. The second sidechain

counts the votes assigned to the various candidates

(result).

System Architecture

The proposed system manages 3 distinct phases of the

voting process

1. preparatory activities and formation of electoral

lists;

2. management of voting;

3. count of votes.

In particular, it clearly separates phase 2 from phase

3, thanks to the presence of two separate blockchains,

even if concatenated, which does not make any elec-

tronic voting system, where the voting automatically

implies the counting of votes.

Pegged sidechain is a blockchain that is attached to the

parent chain (blockchain). In one-way peg the transfer of

assets occur when one blockchain destroys its assets publi-

cly and upon deletion of these assets a new blockchain will

create new assets.

Crypto-voting, a Blockchain based e-Voting System

225

The permissioned blockchain of Crypto-voting af-

ter the creation of the sidechain BitPoll is frozen,

eliminating the blind scripts, through the association

with a hash signed by a triad of persons responsible

for the election with their own private signature. In

this way nobody can:

1. re-open the blockchain, without the complicity of

the triad;

2. alter the individual votes without the complicity

of the ex-post scrutinizing nodes;

3. reconstruct the association of the vote to the per-

son (voter).

Research Objectives

The Crypto-voting system will include the realization

of a network of installed virtual voting booth. The

project includes the study of tele-management and

tele-maintenance services to be implemented using

cloud systems that work together with the blockchain.

The research activity should interest the following

issues:

• integration of cybersecurity tools on blockchain in

the cloud system;

• development of a multi-tenant system with segre-

gation of individual customer data in private cloud

instances;

• development of dedicated software engines both

on the Cloud and on the permissioned blockchain.

• evolution of the algorithms of sharing a secret;

• development of code libraries necessary for the

voting system.

Privacy issues represents an important research topic

in blockchain based systems, especially in the cases

of the blockchain represent a layer of more complex

system (Zyskind et al., 2015; Dorri et al., 2017). We

identiﬁed in the Shamir’s Secret Sharing algorithm

(Shamir, 1979) a solution for our privacy issues. One

of the aims of the Crytpo-voting project is the adap-

tion and evolution of this algorithm for the purposes

of the system. In addition, dedicated software will be

designed to manage speciﬁc conﬁgurations that des-

cribe the optimization of the ﬁrst and second level

support process. The design of blockchain based soft-

ware systems must face the lack of speciﬁc guidelines

and design tools (Porru et al., 2017). The deﬁnition

of design protocols and tools represents another rese-

arch challenge of this proposal. In this way, the re-

search behind the project will contribute to the deve-

lopment of the engineering of the linked softwre app-

lied to the blockchain (Lenarduzzi et al., 2018; Tonelli

et al., 2018). Speciﬁc code libraries will be based on

modern deep and machine learning technologies, so

that the system learns from experience. These libra-

ries will be used for the control procedures.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This paper describes the research proposal to deﬁne

and implement a new e-voting system concept. This

system is called Crypto-voting and it is based on per-

missioned blockchain technology.

The elements of innovation, compared to the state

of the art, consist in the approach, in the techno-

logy and in the use of tools such as Smart Contracts.

The proposal focuses on the potential of the sidechain

technology. We described how it is possible to imple-

ment Crypto-voting system using two linked block-

chains. The ﬁrst records voters and voting procedures,

the second counts vote and provides voting results.

This approach emphasizes the importance of anony-

mization of the network consensus nodes. Smart con-

tracts will be responsible for managing voting proce-

dures and results. Our system increases the efﬁciency

of the validation phase and of the assignment of the

candidate’s vote.

In addition, the proposed technology covers as-

pects not currently treated, such as a safe timing of

voting abroad, the automatic management of electoral

lists, integration of the identiﬁcation process with that

of voting secrecy advanced, and automatic and reli-

able mechanisms to guarantee the security of voting.

The research will also focus on architectural issues.

For instance, the use of cloud system to realize the

virtual voting booth leads to the integration of cyber-

security and privacy tools to protect the blockchain in

the Cloud system.

The Crypto-voting system could represent an uni-

que in the technological European landscape and in

the e-voting market. The system could offer to their

own users services really customizable, integrable

and enough reliable at the same time. The nature of

this research proposal is itself of directed towards the

wide circulation of results in the research community

and in the e-government sectors. Considering the vas-

tness of the proposal, research results could interest

several research institutions, which can enrich results

by means an audience of experts more articulated than

that of the proponents. In the same way, it is essential

the public actors involvement in order to verify if the

ambition related to the project could effectively ﬁnd

an application feedback.

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