E-Voting With Blockchain: An E-Voting Protocol with Decentralisation and Voter Privacy

Technology has positive impacts on many aspects of our social life. Designing a 24 hour globally connected architecture enables ease of access to a variety of resources and services. Furthermore, technology like the Internet has been a fertile ground for innovation and creativity. One such disruptive innovation is blockchain - a keystone of cryptocurrencies. The blockchain technology is presented as a game changer for many of the existing and emerging technologies/services. With its immutability property and decentralised architecture, it is taking centre stage in many services as an equalisation factor to the current parity between consumers and large corporations/governments. One potential application of the blockchain is in e-voting schemes. The objective of such a scheme would be to provide a decentralised architecture to run and support a voting scheme that is open, fair, and independently verifiable. In this paper, we propose a potential new e-voting protocol that utilises the blockchain as a transparent ballot box. The protocol has been designed to adhere to fundamental e-voting properties as well as offer a degree of decentralisation and allow for the voter to change/update their vote (within the permissible voting period). This paper highlights the pros and cons of using blockchain for such a proposal from a practical point view in both development/deployment and usage contexts. Concluding the paper is a potential roadmap for blockchain technology to be able to support complex applications.