Decentralize Internet Voting Model with Blockchain Smart Contract

Abstract

A blockchain smart contract for internet voting offers the benefits of decentralization, immutability, security, privacy, and transparency. The study adopts design science research approach to create and deploy a model utilizing Ethereum's platform, known for its flexible and expressive smart contract development capabilities. The study progresses through three stages: a review and contract implementation phase, a mining network phase, and a decentralized wallet application design phase. Using an Ethereum account, election authorities, candidates, and voters can generate a unique, encrypted identity key that can only be decrypted with a passphrase to conduct voting transactions. The system ensures real-time, verifiable election results, as it automatically closes at the designated deadline. The result prohibits a single voter from registering twice and voting for multiple candidates. The voting system utilizes the security features of blockchain technology to ensuring transparent, immutable, and secure voting transactions. Security and forensic experts can investigate the artifacts made of the blockchain technology's cryptographic algorithms. Future studies should evaluate the trade-offs between security and efficiency in different consensus mechanisms and optimization of blockchain resources for large scale elections.