Ensuring Security of Digital Voting Through Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Recently, blockchains have found a place in all sorts of industries, ranging from healthcare to the government sector, finance, real estate and utilities. Blockchain has proved to be advantageous to the applications which previously required a central authority and a trusted intermediary, as now blockchain allows them to operate in a decentralised manner and helps them to achieve the same functionality much more efficiently. Transactions in blockchains are trustless, that is, the involved parties without knowing each other and without establishing any trust relations, sit in any corner of the world and such transactions thus occur without any trusted middlemen. For authorisation of these transactions, strong cryptographic principles, which form an essential part of the blockchain infrastructure, are used. Smart contracts basically add a layer of logic and computation to the already existing trust infrastructure of the blockchain, and thus allows for appropriate, heavily automated and distributed workflows, to function efficiently. In this chapter, we outline the art of using smart contracts and blockchain technology to implement a decentralized, secure, transparent yet anonymous digital voting system.