Blockchain-based Voting System

Published on 06 May 2021. Written by Dineshkumar E

In recent days you might have come across terms like blockchain, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, etc. frequently. Blockchain is a technology that finds its applications in financial institutions, cryptocurrency, healthcare, real estate, etc. Since the blockchain stores its data globally in different servers - allowing everyone to see the entries in real-time, it is difficult for an individual to take over the control or manipulate the data. We are going to use blockchain to develop a voting system to eliminate the election frauds. 

In this blockchain-based voting system project, we will develop a distributed electronic voting system and also identify the technological limitations of using this system. 

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SLNOTE
Problem statement

In the traditional voting system, the process of voting is less secured and the cost of hosting an election is also high. To overcome this a blockchain voting system is proposed.

Procedure

Registration

First, verifying the voter is an essential part of the system this is to avoid the misuse of someone’s identity for voting. The voter should fill a form that collects information like national identity number, mail address, postal address, password, etc. All this information forms a transaction created on a voter blockchain.

After registering the automated government miner will analyse the transaction whether the voter has the right to vote or not. Also, a random password is generated to use on the polling station. In this process, a voter blockchain is used to keep track of both transactions: when a user registers and when authorized by a government miner. 

It is important to remember that voter blockchain will never store the details of the vote cast by the user. 

SLLATEST
Voting mechanism and Architecture

The architecture is designed by taking inspiration from both the bitcoin network and the traditional voting system’s aggregation process. This is a decentralized network with two distinct blockchains and divided into three abstract - National, Constituency and Local. 

Local consists of all the digital polling stations of that particular constituency. The constituencyconsists of all the nodes that are at the constituency level. The constituency nodes are directly connected to each other to the subset of the polling station. 

National - consists of nodes that are not tied to location, the sole purpose of this abstract is to add blocks to vote blockchain and to mine transactions. 

Independent bodies are used to audit and monitor the voting process. They also act as miners during the counting process. 

Voting process

It requires three pieces of information for an individual to publish their vote: identification number, the password generated during registration, ballot card with QR code. The individual can vote at a local polling station or via the internet by using the URL provided at the ballot card. 

Here the polling system consults the voter blockchain whether the user has the right to vote or use up their vote. Once the vote is confirmed the users vote in the voter’s blockchain is removed. It is important to remember that two different blockchains are used; one contains the user details and the second contains the contents of the vote. 

Advantages of the blockchain-based voting system:

1. This system makes the voting process easier and faster, ensuring privacy as well. 
2. As the system is held on a decentralized network less chance of failure in the system.
3. If any change is done to a block it must refer to the previous version so it prevents the tampering of the votes by integrating the previous entries. 

SLDYK
Kit required to develop Blockchain-based Voting System:

• HTML

Technologies you will learn by working on Blockchain-based Voting System:

• Blockchain

Any Questions?