Blockchain-Enabled Trust less and Transparent EVoting using Smart Contracts and Consensus Mechanism

The fundamental of democracy is voting. The process of voting must be open, safe and must be an embodiment of democracy. The development of technologies increases the need in safe and impeccable electoral systems. E.g. the paper ballot used to be subject to human error, logistic inconvenience or vote manipulation. The electronic voting machine itself is compromised on numerous occasions due to security concerns, such as cyberattacks, or insider manipulation, and questions its reliability. In order to maintain democracy, they need electoral systems to be updated with the technology and at the same time be reliable and trusted. The blockchain technology would present answers to the current questions regarding the integrity and reliability of the electoral process as it would offer an alternative which is more transparent, immutable and resilient and is technologically advanced. The concept of blockchain is based on the principles of decentralization and cryptography that result in the reduction in the total dependence on central authority and the lack of the single point of failure phenomenon. In this technology, every vote is recorded as a secure digital transaction which is stored in a common ledger and authenticated by consensus, and cannot be manipulated. It wins the confidence and loyalty of voter. A blockchain-based smart contract-based voting system provides a system that carries out important functions automatically, such as ascertaining the eligibility of the voter, preventing or detecting fraud, and counting the votes in real-time. It is a system that has already been experimented with real elections in certain countries like Estonia, Sierra Leone and the UAE. These tests proved that blockchain will be capable of providing the voting process with increased transparency, increased security, and efficiency. However, they also discovered several problems, including the impossibility to deal with a high number of voters, consider digital identity, and make it available to everyone and integrate it into the existing legislation. In this chapter, the authors discuss the advantages and the disadvantages of the blockchain voting, and how it can be used to create more trust to the election process and more individuals participate in the democracy.