Electronic Voting System Using an Enterprise Blockchain

<jats:p>Conventional electronic voting systems use a centralized scheme. A central administration of these systems manages the entire voting process and has partial or total control over the database and the system itself. This creates some problems, accidental or intentional, such as possible manipulation of the database and double voting. Many of these problems have been solved thanks to permissionless blockchain technologies in new voting systems; however, the classic consensus method of such blockchains requires specific computing power during each voting operation. This has a significant impact on power consumption, compromises the efficiency and increases the system latency. However, using a permissioned blockchain improves efficiency and reduces system energy consumption, mainly due to the elimination of the typical consensus protocols used by public blockchains. The use of smart contracts provides a secure mechanism to guarantee the accuracy of the voting result and make the counting procedure public and protected against fraudulent actions, and contributes to preserving the anonymity of the votes. Its adoption in electronic voting systems can help mitigate part of these problems. Therefore, this paper proposes a system that ensures high reliability by applying enterprise blockchain technology to electronic voting, securing the secret ballot. In addition, a flexible network configuration is presented, discussing how the solution addresses some of the security and reliability issues commonly faced by electronic voting system solutions.</jats:p>