An Analytical View on Political Voting System using Blockchain Technology - UAE Case Study

Abstract

Voting is a pillar of modern society, but the traditional paper voting system is prone to fraud and failure. Votes can sometimes be miscounted or might be lost in transit. Besides, the electronic voting system has been active subject research for decades. However, the old traditional voting system lacks security and privacy features, which has been a challenge for a long time. As a solution, this paper is proposing a prototype blockchain-based electronic voting system for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) political election process. A blockchain system is a distributed decentralized, immutable database; that allows the data to be distributed and shared among all the participants in a network. Also, it has many advantages that can be applied in many use cases, such as electronic voting systems. Implementing the blockchain-based electronic voting system will minimize the costs of running an election while ensuring integrity. It has the potential to limit voter fraud while making the votes traceable and verifiable, preventing unauthorized activity, and fake votes by authenticating each voter in the system. The UAE has a blockchain initiative that seeks to have 50 percent paperless transactions in all its governmental processes by the end of 2021. This paper studied the effectiveness of adopting blockchain in the UAE political election.