1. Introduction
Today, many countries face difficulties in verifying the identity of the voters, safely transmitting the votes to the necessary institutions, and ensuring the transparency and accuracy that will determine the winner of the election. After voting, the voter leaves the booth and votes are thrown into the ballot box, and the vote is mixed with other ballot papers. Thus, voting is done in accordance with confidentiality. Lastly, election officials count the votes. At this point, the public must wait for the counting process to end. There are two important points in this process. One of them is to make the right decision about valid and invalid votes, which polling station officials often disagree on. Another important point is the security of the computers and software used for election. Many traditional measures are taken for electoral security and reliability. These measures are both costly, complex, and controversial. Even election applications made with central servers can cause problems because someone can change the data in the database and the source code on the web server. For example, there is a possibility that identities or personal information can be stolen by hackers. A traditional database system partially fulfills the security requirements and therefore, alternative technologies should be explored. Along with the recent developments in technology, electronic voting systems are considered to replace traditional pen and paper voting mechanisms (Kim et al., 2020).
Although the use of electronic voting systems has the potential to increase the security and the effectiveness of the voting process, this has not really happened. The centralized management and the storage of voting data and results have drawbacks in addition to the current worries regarding the use of electronic voting systems (Culnane et al., 2019; Ewing, 2019; Ryan PYA et al., 2015). According to the studies, using electronic voting may present the following difficulties: data integrity, reliability, transparency, ballot secrecy, consequences of malfunction, voters without formal education, need for specialized IT skills, equipment storage, security, fraud-related issues, and cost (Esteve et al., 2012).
In 2008, with the emergence of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology, the foundation of an immutable, cryptographically secure, and distributed database system was laid (Nakamoto, 2008). Rather than having a network, a central server, and a database; blockchain is a network and a database. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer network of computers, called nodes, that share all data and code on the network. No more central servers are needed with this technology because a group of computers can talk to each other on the same network. Basically, a decentralized node for electronic voting is provided with blockchain technology (Jafar et al., 2021). Since applications created using blockchain technology are distributed and
owned by numerous parties, no one can alter or update the data in the blockchain (Garg et al., 2019). Therefore, blockchain offers a fascinating alternative to traditional electronic voting methods with characteristics like decentralization, transparency, non-repudiation, and security protection (Gao et al., 2019; Huang et al., 2021). This eliminates the many security issues mentioned above.
The blockchain technology has begun to be tested in many applications. All data is secured with cryptographic hashing and verified by a consensus algorithm. In this study, the possible effects of blockchain implementation will be covered. A permitted peer-to-peer blockchain architecture and common cryptographic tools in conjunction with the smart contract system developed using the Solidity programming language will be applied. Smart contracts are programmed agreements that go into effect automatically when certain criteria are met. Smart contracts are utilized as a legally enforceable agreement between parties, just like traditional written contracts. Smart contracts eliminate the need for a middleman by automating transactions and enabling direct, automatic agreement-making between parties (Hjálmarsson et al., 2018).
There are various issues related to the traditional pen and paper voting procedures such as ballot stuffing, voter-ID issues, booth capturing, outdated voting machines, long election periods and big queues at polling places. All these reasons frustrate voters and make them lose their confidence in a democratic voting system. The aim of this study is to provide secure, transparent, and accessible electronic voting among insecure parties and change the traditional voting process. In brief, the basic problems that plague the current democratic elections will try to be eliminated. The difference of this study from others is that the end-user interface is going to be much simpler and more convenient compared to other electronic voting systems making it more attractive for users to vote. It is also going to be a more secure and much faster system allowing user transactions to be processed more rapidly.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Next section discusses the latest literature review including blockchain based voting systems. Third section mentions the methods used in this paper. Fourth section explains the development of the blockchain based electronic voting application and finally, the last section states the conclusions and the future work.
2. Literature Review
If a suitable structure is given, blockchain technology can well be used for anonymous elections and voting. Due to the blockchain technology, which can bring transparency to the elections, fake votes can be prevented, and participants can control their own votes. Since the votes will be on the
blockchain, the states and the voters will have control permission. Thus, they can make sure that none of the votes are changed, reversed, removed, or no illegitimate votes are added. However, scalability problems exist with blockchain-based voting systems that are currently in use. On a small scale, these systems are usable. However, because they rely on modern blockchain frameworks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, etc., their systems are inefficient to manage millions of transactions at the national level (Jafar et al., 2021). Currently, blockchain voting systems are best suitable to be used in small scale elections such as schools, associations, foundations, institutions, or small and mid-size businesses.
2.1. Blockchain Based Voting Systems
There are different kinds of blockchain voting applications available. One of them is Follow My Vote. For use in globally sponsored elections, this application creates open source, end-to-end verified blockchain voting software (Follow My Vote, 2022). The goal of Follow My Vote is to advance truth and liberty by enabling people to engage in effective communication and put non-coercive solutions to societal issues into action. In a nutshell, it works to establish international standards for the voting systems’ integrity (Cucurull et al., 2018).
In collaboration with the Swiss city of Zug and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, worldwide IT service company Luxoft Harding, Inc. created the first customized blockchain electronic voting system called e-Vote (Luxoft-1, 2022). Luxoft declares its commitment to make this platform open source and creates a Blockchain for Government Alliance so that anyone can join developing the source code of e-Vote as well as promote blockchain use in public institutions to encourage government acceptance of blockchain-based services (Luxoft-2, 2022).
Founded in 2015, Agora.vote was used in one region of Sierra Leone’s March 2018 presidential election. The technological innovations that form the foundation of Agora’s architecture include a customized blockchain, distinctive participatory security, and a legal consensus process (Agora, 2022). Agora’s native token is called the vote. It urges people to support a safe and open electoral process.
Another blockchain-based online voting system called Polys is supported by open-source cryptographic techniques. These are run by Kaspersky Lab. Polys supports student councils, unions, and associations in organizing elections and distributing election information to the student body (Sayyad et al., 2019). Online elections using Polys increase community productivity, strengthen relationships with group leaders, and draw in new supporters (Polys, 2022). By assisting local governments,
state governments, and other organizations to concentrate on gathering and drafting proposals, Polys seeks to save them time and money.
Voatz developed a blockchain-based voting system for smartphones that allows voters to cast distant, anonymous ballots and check that their votes were accurately counted. Voters certify the accuracy of the information provided by the applicants and themselves on the application and provide proof of their identities by a picture and biometric evidence, such as a fingerprint or retinal scan that acts as a distinctive signature (Voatz, 2022).
On the Ethereum blockchain, there is a decentralized voting network called Netvote. For the system’s user interface, Netvote uses decentralized apps. Election administrators can design ballots, set registration guidelines, create ballots, and start and stop voting using the administrator app. The Voter app is used by individual voters for registration, voting, and voter identification and can be combined with other gadgets (like biometric readers). Then, election results are computed and verified using the Tally App (Alexander et al., 2018).
There is also the blocko company. This company supports the creation of a new voting system on the blockchain. Blocko’s Coinstack platform is working to establish a blockchain system to receive voting projects and election results. Through this program, voters will propose their own ideas and decision makers and local governments will fund the best and winning ideas/projects (Blocko, 2022).
Another application is Ethereum Stack Exchange. It is both a Q&A and a voting site for ethereum stack exchange users. The platform is a decentralized application platform and uses smart contracts. Stack exchange is by far the most popular question and answer site where developers can get in-depth and specific responses to coding challenges. Although mainly used in tech, the discourse on Stack exchange covers everything from religion to home brewing (Ethereum Stack Exchange, 2022).
2.2. Related Literature
There are other blockchain voting systems suggested by scientists. A decentralized anonymous transparent electronic voting system with a low bar for participant confidence was proposed by Lai et al. called DATE (Lai et al., 2018). They believe that the existing DATE voting mechanism is appropriate for extensive electronic elections. Unfortunately, the lack of a third-party authority on the scheme accountable for auditing the vote after the election process makes their suggested solution insufficient to defend against DoS attacks. The platform’s limitations make this system only suited for modest scales (Gao et al., 2019).
A blockchain-based anti-quantum electronic voting mechanism with an audit feature has been proposed by Gao et al. (2019). In order to make the code based Niederreiter algorithm more resilient to quantum attacks, changes have also been made to it. A regulator for certificateless cryptography is The Key Generation Center (KGC). It not only acknowledges the voter’s anonymity, but it also makes the audit process easier. However, a closer look at their method demonstrates that, even with a limited voter turnout, there are still significant security and efficiency advantages for a smallscale election. If the number is large, some efficiency is sacrificed to improve security (Fernandez-Carames and Fraga-Lamas, 2020).
Block-based e-voting architecture (BEA) was proposed by Khan, K.M. et al. (2020) and involved rigorous experimentation with permissioned and permissionless blockchain architectures under various voting population, block size, block generation rate, and block transaction speed scenarios. According to their plan, the election process necessitates the creation of voter and candidate addresses. Votes from voters are subsequently sent to candidates at these addresses. To track the votes and their statuses, the mining group updates the main blockchain’s ledger. Until a miner updates the main ledger, the voting status is not confirmed. At the polling place, the vote is subsequently cast using the voting machine. There are, however, certain weaknesses in this paradigm. There is no regulatory authority to restrict invalid voters from casting a vote, and it is not protected from quantum attach. Their methodology is inaccurate and do not give importance to the integrity of the voters.
The Blockchain-based Electronic Voting Scheme (BES), proposed by Yi (2019), provides strategies for enhancing electronic voting security in a peer-to-peer network. The system was tested and designed on Linux computers in a P2P network. Attacks using countermeasures are a big problem in this strategy. This approach is not suitable for centralized usage in a system with multiple agents and calls for the engagement of trustworthy third parties.
3. Methods
This study is a web application of electronic voting. An administrator starts an election process by logging in to the system and determining the candidates. After that, voters vote for the candidate they want. Finally, the result of the election is computed. The web application developed in this study is best suited for small and mid-scale elections such as schools, associations, foundations, institutions, or small and mid-size businesses.
First, both the administrator and the voter need an account and an address with Ethereum’s cryptocurrency Ether (usually metamask is used). Administrators identify candidates along with their parties when they
connect to the network. Voters cast their votes and pay a small transaction fee to write that transaction on the blockchain. This transaction fee is called “gas”. When voting takes place, some nodes in the network, called miners, compete to complete this transaction. The miner who completes this process is rewarded with Ether, which is the fee paid for the vote. In return, it is ensured that the vote is recorded correctly.
The application is divided into two parts: the user interface and the background Ethereum network. There is a traditional front-end client created using HTML, CSS and Javascript. Ethers.js will be used to communicate with smart contracts and send transactions. Users will connect to the Ethereum network with the Infura API and perform various operations with HTTP requests. Finally, since Infura does not support wallet functions, Truffle will provide the HD wallet in the testing phase and enable the wallet to be able to transact in Infura API and sign the transactions being sent. The business logic of this need to be applied into smart contracts. In the smart contract, the functions will be written according to the actions of the administrators and the voters.
Every change made in a blockchain is called a transaction. Transaction is the path which the outside world interacts with the Ethereum network. The transaction is used when someone wants to change or update the state stored on the Ethereum network. Each transaction requires a transaction fee or a service fee. Ether is often used as a service fee, also called a transaction or a gas fee. Since this application is running on the testnet, test ether will be used to pay this fee. Test ether will also be used to help select the ropsten testnet. After selecting, test accounts will be seen in this testnet. Then, when the user makes a transaction, after the transaction is approved, this approved transaction is sent to the ethereum testnet, which has been determined as the endpoint. In short, the front-end takes input from the user and creates requests to be sent to smart contracts. Due to ether.js, the transaction is confirmed and sent to the network. The smart contract is where the application’s business logic is written [3]. Figure 1 below shows the logic of the application.
Figure 1. Logic of the application
The pages that the end users can see in the user interface of the application will be the administrator and the voting pages. The candidates and the parties can be determined from the administrator page. If an incorrect candidate is added to the system, it can be deleted. On the election
page, the voters will be able choose which candidate to vote for and vote for that person.
4. Development of the System
4.1. Arhitectural Design of the System
Figure 2. Interface Logic
The interface relationship is shown in Figure 2. The user must have a wallet address when logging in to the application. It is important to use a wallet address in decentralized applications (dapps), as there are processes such as confirming transactions, paying gas fees, figuring out in which address to operate, where to connect and process. If the users do not log in with their wallet addresses, they cannot perform any actions. Else, if the users have logged in to the application with their wallet addresses, the dapp transactions will start because the application is integrated with the basic functions of dapp. Thus, the system will be able to communicate with the smart contracts and perform the transactions. Below are the explanations of the features of this application.
- User Interface: It contains all of the pages and the elements as well as the necessary methods.
- Home page: The page that inform the users about the application and direct them to the login page and provide access.
- Dapp operations: Since a dapp application is created when connecting to the system, the libraries and the APIs related to it start to work even while connecting, so the smart contract can be communicated in the ethereum network and the application can be run in a decentralized way.
Figure 3. System Architecture
Figure 3 above shows the actions that the user will take in the system. First, when logging in to the application, it is determined whether the user logging in is an administrator or a voter so that the application can bring up the correct page according to the type of the user. If it is an administrator, the administrator enters the names and parties of the candidates to be elected. If it is a voter, the voter votes for one of the determined candidates. It doesn’t make a difference if it is an administrator or a voter, the same action will take place in both. The transactions are going to be confirmed and reported to the ethereum network. After the transaction is approved, a certain amount of gas fee is going to be paid. Then, a notification will be sent to the ethereum network, and the network approval process will be started. The transaction hash on the user interface will be shown, allowing both the voters and the administrators to track their transactions via etherscan. io. The values in the smart contract are updated with the transaction sent by both the administrators and the voters. After updating these values, the administrators and the voters can see that their pages were updated, and new values were created.
Figure 4. Layered Architecture
The process from the realization of the transaction to the approval of it by the ethereum network both from the administrator and the voter side is shown as a layered architecture in Figure-4. To interact with the Ethereum network, json-rpc calls need to be sent to an Ethereum node. Therefore, in the first layer, the JavaScript code is processed in JSON RPC format, in the type requested by Ethers.js and Infura API. Then, this data, which is brought to the desired format, will be signed, and sent to the Ethereum network, through the Ethers library. In the third stage, the transaction can be followed via etherscan.io, because of the transaction hash displayed on the front end and returned to the application. Then, the transactions sent are implemented in the contract that is deployed to the ethereum network. Finally, the data is updated in the user interface and access to the new data is provided.
4.2. Interface Design
Figure 5. Home Page
Figure 6. About Page
As can be seen in Figure 5, when the user logs in to the site, the home page will greet the user. The user can switch to the about page to get more information about the application, and to the login page to log in to the system. The user can also switch to the about page by clicking the learn more button.
As seen in Figure 6, information about the application will be given when the user logs in to the about page. In addition, information is given about the issues to be considered while voting. The user must read this page carefully to vote correctly.
Figure 7. Login Page
As can be seen in Figure 7, this is the login page. In order for voters to vote, the metamask plugin must be installed in Chrome and voters must create an account there. If the user has not created an account with the metamask wallet in the application, no functionality of the application will work. Then the user gets the private key of the account from the metamask wallet and is directed to the administrator panel or to the voter page after logging in according to the private key the user enters. If the user clicks without entering a password or enters an incorrect password, the application will give an error. The user must enter the correct private key.
Figure 8. Admin Page
Figure 9. Voter Page
As can be seen in Figure 8, this is the administrator page. After the administrator connects to the application, s/he can see the public key on the screen and confirm that it is his/hers. Also, since the administrator’s public key is defined as private, the application can recognize that s/he is logged in to the application and subsequently, prints out ‘you are the administrator’ text to the screen. Then, the administrator adds both the name and the
party of the candidate so that the voters can vote. After the administrator clicks the add candidate button, the process of confirming the transaction and sending it to the network begins. A screen with this information has been designed so that the administrator can follow this process. There is the transaction hash in it. By clicking on it, the administrator will be directed to the etherscan.io site and will be able to see the details of the transaction. The block number where the transaction is recorded can be seen in addition to the candidate ID with transaction mining. Afterwards, the administrator can log in to metamask and check how much balance is left in his/her account, as a certain amount of gas fee needs to be charged from the account. The details of the transaction can be reviewed from this page. Finally, if the administrator has entered an incorrect candidate and a party name after all these processes have been completed, there is still the ability to delete it. After clicking delete, the candidate and the party names are deleted. Again, this process can be followed on the screen.
As can be seen in Figure 9, this is the voter page. After the voters connect to the application, they can see the public key on the screen and confirm that it belongs to them. Voters, who then choose their candidates, can vote by pressing the voting button. After voting is completed, this button closes and the process of confirming the transaction and submitting it to the network begins. A screen with this information has been designed so that the voters can follow this process. There is the transaction hash in it. By clicking on it, they will be directed to the etherscan.io site and will be able to see the details of the transactions. The block number where the transaction is recorded can be seen in addition to when the transaction is completed with transaction mining. The text ‘you voted successfully’ appears. Then, the voters can log in to the metamask and check how much balance is left in their accounts, as a certain amount of gas fee will be charged from their accounts. They can also review the details of the transactions from this page. Finally, if the voters try to vote again and log in to the page, they cannot vote because the voting button will be off. They will also see the text ‘this election has been voted on’.
5. Conclusion
In this study, an application that will function as a completely decentralized electronic voting system is implemented and it is aimed to solve the problem of safe electronic voting. According to the studies, it is seen that voting systems using blockchain technology have started to be tested in small size elections and have achieved successful results, but relevant tests are being carried out in larger size elections such as national or governmental elections. In the application, a permissive blockchain architecture and common cryptographic tools are used, along with a smart contract system developed in the solidity programming language, to access
a secure peer-to-peer network. Since the final application has been tested using the necessary approaches, it meets the important requirements of an electronic voting system and can be concluded that it is a well working system. The voting process using this application is much faster and safer, the data is stored securely and reliably, and the voting process is done in real time. Also, the voting process and the calculation of the number of votes are faster, there is a more democratic decision-making mechanism, and it can be ensured that all votes are counted and not removed or replaced.
In conclusion, the admin determines the names of the candidates and their parties in this application and can see the total votes received by each candidate. After that, the voters vote for the designated candidates. During the voting process, anyone can follow the process and make sure that it has been done correctly due to the follow-up screen in the application. This screen is also on the administrator side. The administrator can also follow the process while adding the candidates. The voters cannot vote again after the voting is completed. In addition, if the voters want, they can also get information about the voting and the logic of the system from the about section of the website before they vote.
The main limitation of this study is that it is only designed for small and mid-size elections such as schools, associations, foundations, institutions, or small and mid-size businesses. Scalability problems still exist with blockchain-based voting systems that are currently in use. When the scale of the election becomes larger, these blockchain-based voting systems becomes slower. Currently, these systems rely on modern blockchain frameworks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, etc. and those frameworks are inefficient to manage millions of transactions such as in a national-level government election. Future studies may try to use a different technology to design an electronic voting system for larger elections or investigate blockchain technology deeper to find a way to improve the system for larger elections.
References
Agora. (2022). Retrieved 20 July 2022, from https://www.agora.vote
Alexander, J., Landers, S., & Howerton, B. (2018). Netvote: A decentralized voting network.
Blocko - Managed Service Blockchain Simplified. (2022). Retrieved 30 July 2022, from https://en.blocko.io/
Cucurull, J., Rodríguez-Pérez, A., Finogina, T., & Puiggali, J. (2018, July). Blo-ckchain-based internet voting: systems’ compliance with international standards. In International Conference on Business Information Systems (pp. 300-312). Springer, Cham.
Culnane, C., Essex, A., Lewis, S. J., Pereira, O., & Teague, V. (2019). Knights and knaves run elections: Internet voting and undetectable electoral fraud. IEEE Security & Privacy, 17(4), 62-70.
Ethereum Stack Exchange. (2022). Retrieved 4 August 2022, from https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/
Ewing, P. (2019). What You Need to Know about US Election Security and Voting Machines.
Esteve, J. B., Goldsmith, B., & Turner, J. (2012). International experience with e-voting. Norwegian E-Vote Project. International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Document disponibil online la adresa http://www. ifes. org/Content/Publications/News-in-Brief/2012/June/% 7E/media/B7FB434187E943C18F4D4992A4EF75DA. pdf.
Fernandez-Carames, T. M., & Fraga-Lamas, P. (2020). Towards post-quantum blockchain: A review on blockchain cryptography resistant to quantum computing attacks. IEEE access, 8, 21091-21116.
Follow My Vote- Secure Decentralized Application Development. (2022). Retrieved 22 July 2022, from https://followmyvote.com
Garg, K., Saraswat, P., Bisht, S., Aggarwal, S. K., Kothuri, S. K., & Gupta, S. (2019, April). A comparitive analysis on e-voting system using blockchain. In 2019 4th International Conference on Internet of Things: Smart Innovation and Usages (IoT-SIU) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Gao, S., Zheng, D., Guo, R., Jing, C., & Hu, C. (2019). An anti-quantum e-voting protocol in blockchain with audit function. IEEE Access, 7, 115304115316 .
Huang, J., He, D., Obaidat, M. S., Vijayakumar, P., Luo, M., & Choo, K. K. R. (2021). The application of the blockchain technology in voting systems: A review. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 54(3), 1-28.
Hjálmarsson, F. b., Hreiðarsson, G. K., Hamdaqa, M., & Hjálmtýsson, G. (2018, July). Blockchain-based e-voting system. In 2018 IEEE 11th international conference on cloud computing (CLOUD) (pp. 983-986). IEEE.
Jafar, U., Aziz, M. J. A., & Shukur, Z. (2021). Blockchain for electronic voting system-review and open research challenges. Sensors, 21(17), 5874.
Khan, K. M., Arshad, J., & Khan, M. M. (2020). Investigating performance constraints for blockchain based secure e-voting system. Future Generation Computer Systems, 105, 13-26.
Kim, T., Ochoa, J., Faika, T., Mantooth, A., Di, J., Li, Q., & Lee, Y. (2020). An overview of cyber-physical security of battery management systems and adoption of blockchain technology. IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics.
Lai, W. J., Hsieh, Y. C., Hsueh, C. W., & Wu, J. L. (2018, August). Date: A decentralized, anonymous, and transparent e-voting system. In 2018 1st IEEE international conference on hot information-centric networking (HotICN) (pp. 24-29). IEEE.
Luxoft-1- Digital Strategy, Consulting and Engineering at Scale. (2022). Retrieved 15 July 2022, from https://www.luxoft.com/
Luxoft-2- Digital Strategy, Consulting and Engineering at Scale. (2022). Retrieved 16 July 2022, from https://www.luxoft.com/pr/luxofts-evoting-plat-form-enables-first-consultative-vote-based-on-blockchain-in-switzerland/
Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Decentralized Business Review, 21260.
Polys - Online Voting System. (2022). Retrieved 25 July 2022, from https:// polys.me/
Ryan, P. Y., Schneider, S., & Teague, V. (2015). End-to-end verifiability in voting systems, from theory to practice. IEEE Security & Privacy, 13(3), 59-62.
Sayyad, S. F., Pawar, M., Patil, A., Pathare, V., Poduval, P., Sayyad, S., … & Poduval, P. (2019). Features of blockchain voting: A survey. Int. J, 5, 12-14.
Voatz secure and convenient voting anywhere. (2022). Retrieved 28 July 2022, from https://voatz.com/
Yi, H. (2019). Securing e-voting based on blockchain in P2P network. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2019(1), 1-9.
Ceren Çubukçu Çerasi
