On Secure E-Voting over Blockchain

TY - JOUR

T1 - On Secure E-Voting over Blockchain

AU - McCorry, Patrick

AU - Mehrnezhad, Maryam

AU - Toreini, Ehsan

AU - Shahandashti, Siamak F.

AU - Hao, Feng

N1 - © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details

PY - 2021/12/1

Y1 - 2021/12/1

N2 - This article discusses secure methods to conduct e-voting over a blockchain in three different settings: decentralized voting, centralized remote voting, and centralized polling station voting. These settings cover almost all voting scenarios that occur in practice. A proof-of-concept implementation for decentralized voting over Ethereum's blockchain is presented. This work demonstrates the suitable use of a blockchain not just as a public bulletin board but, more importantly, as a trustworthy computing platform that enforces the correct execution of the voting protocol in a publicly verifiable manner. We also discuss scaling up a blockchain-based voting application for national elections. We show that for national-scale elections the major verifiability problems can be addressed without having to depend on any blockchain. However, a blockchain remains a viable option to realize a public bulletin board, which has the advantage of being a "preventive"measure to stop retrospective changes on previously published records as opposed to a "detective"measure like the use of mirror websites. CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy;

AB - This article discusses secure methods to conduct e-voting over a blockchain in three different settings: decentralized voting, centralized remote voting, and centralized polling station voting. These settings cover almost all voting scenarios that occur in practice. A proof-of-concept implementation for decentralized voting over Ethereum's blockchain is presented. This work demonstrates the suitable use of a blockchain not just as a public bulletin board but, more importantly, as a trustworthy computing platform that enforces the correct execution of the voting protocol in a publicly verifiable manner. We also discuss scaling up a blockchain-based voting application for national elections. We show that for national-scale elections the major verifiability problems can be addressed without having to depend on any blockchain. However, a blockchain remains a viable option to realize a public bulletin board, which has the advantage of being a "preventive"measure to stop retrospective changes on previously published records as opposed to a "detective"measure like the use of mirror websites. CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy;

KW - blockchain

KW - boardroom voting

KW - E-voting

KW - Ethereum

KW - national elections

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126172685&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3461461

DO - 10.1145/3461461

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85126172685

SN - 2576-5337

VL - 2

JO - Digital Threats: Research and Practice

JF - Digital Threats: Research and Practice

IS - 4

M1 - 33

ER -