Survey on Using Blockchain Technologies in Electronic Voting Systems

Abstract

Due to the large population movement, many countries and institutions need to modernize their voting systems to support a moving society that is becoming more oriented towards Internet technologies. Electronic voting is a service that is not only used by governments but can be used by numerous institutions to benefit in time, cost, and distance access. The use of new technologies should enable the promotion of confidence and credibility of the voting system by allowing auditing of control mechanisms that deal with the privacy of vote, ballot security, and integrity. One of the recent technologies that have attracted a lot of interest in many different areas is Blockchain technology, which represents a collection of linked (chained) data blocks through cryptographic algorithms and stored in a public distributed database. In other words, Blockchain is a distributed data ledger governed by well-known and approved cryptographic principles that are managed by a group of computers that are not owned by a single person or authority. This paper analyses the current trends of usage of Blockchain technologies in the electronic voting system, highlights the challenges and issues raised so far in the community regarding the security and privacy of the vote and the voter, but also other legal aspects.