Blockchain-based e-voting system without digital ID: A Proof-of-Concept

Abstract: Electronic voting systems have the potential to offer a cost effective, secure and transparent way of communicating with the citizens, increasing trust and participation. However creating a secure open source electronic voting system providing confidentiality and transparency with sufficient performance has long been a challenge.This thesis proposes a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) for a blockchain-based e-voting system in the absence of government-approved digital ID, aiming to provide a resource for public actors, offering a functional smart contract implementation and suggests an infrastructure design it can utilize. The infrastructure design for the PoC features Hyperledger Besu in a permissioned configuration using PoA (QBFT) algorithm with14 nodes. The voting process involves: account generation and distribution via mail by the government, voter-created passwords encrypting browser generated wallets with voting rights acquired by blind signatures. These components work in conjunction with a smart contract, which serves as the central mechanism for handling the voting process. The thesis finds the system meets the key criterias for an evidence-based e-voting system to a high degree but require testing of the infrastructure design together with the smart contract to assess the performance in order to determine the practical feasibility.