A Decentralized Voting System

Abstract

As the area of use for blockchain technology is rapidly spreading, a digitized democratic voting system might just be the next revolutionary step towards a transparent and trusted electoral system. This thesis investigates the possibility of a decentralized voting system and explores the possible challenges regarding privacy, correctness and integrity. Using the Ethereum blockchain and various smart contracts, a prototype was implemented as a proof of concept. The thesis also contains studies regarding the social- and environmental aspects of the prototype and electronic voting in general. Throughout the project, it became clear that the suggested implementation has essential tradeoffs and would not work in practice. The study concretizes what needs to be improved in order to use a voting system built on blockchain technology. This report concludes that there is still work to be done in order to use this technology in crucial fields such as voting. And suggests using a private blockchain in order to implement the specified voting system, DeVote.