IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jftint/v15y2023i4p121-d1107345.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

PVPBC: Privacy and Verifiability Preserving E-Voting Based on Permissioned Blockchain

Author

Listed:
  • Muntadher Sallal

    (Department of Computing and Informatics, Bournemouth University, Dorset BH12 5BB, UK)

  • Ruairí de Fréin

    (School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technological University Dublin, D07 EWV4 Dublin, Ireland)

  • Ali Malik

    (School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technological University Dublin, D07 EWV4 Dublin, Ireland)

Abstract

Privacy and verifiability are crucial security requirements in e-voting systems and combining them is considered to be a challenge given that they seem to be contradictory. On one hand, privacy means that cast votes cannot be traced to the corresponding voters. On the other hand, linkability of voters and their votes is a requirement of verifiability which has the consequence that a voter is able to check their vote in the election result. These two contradictory features can be addressed by adopting privacy-preserving cryptographic primitives, which at the same time as achieving privacy, achieve verifiability. Many end-to-end schemes that support verifiability and privacy have the need for some voter action. This makes ballot casting more complex for voters. We propose the PVPBC voting system, which is an e-voting system that preserves privacy and verifiability without affecting voter usability. The PVPBC voting system uses an effective and distributed method of authorization, which is based on revocable anonymity, by making use of a permissioned distributed ledger and smart contract. In addition, the underlying PVPBC voting system satisfies election verifiability using the Selene voting scheme. The Selene protocol is a verifiable e-voting protocol. It publishes votes in plaintext accompanied by tracking numbers. This enables voters to confirm that their votes have been captured correctly by the system. Numerical experiments support the claim that PVPBC scales well as a function of the number of voters and candidates. In particular, PVPBC’s authorization time increases linearly as a function of the population size. The average latency associated with accessing the system also increases linearly with the voter population size. The latency incurred when a valid authentication transaction is created and sent on the DLT network is 6.275 ms. Empirical results suggest that the cost in GBP for casting and storing an encrypted ballot alongside a tracker commitment is a linear function of the number of candidates, which is an attractive aspect of PVPBC.

Suggested Citation

  • Muntadher Sallal & Ruairí de Fréin & Ali Malik, 2023. "PVPBC: Privacy and Verifiability Preserving E-Voting Based on Permissioned Blockchain," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-27, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:121-:d:1107345
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/15/4/121/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/15/4/121/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Razi Iqbal & Talal Ashraf Butt & Muhammad Afzaal & Khaled Salah, 2019. "Trust management in social Internet of vehicles: Factors, challenges, blockchain, and fog solutions," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 15(1), pages 15501477198, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Stach & Clémentine Gritti, 2023. "Special Issue on Security and Privacy in Blockchains and the IoT Volume II," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-7, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Riya Sapra & Parneeta Dhaliwal, 2021. "Blockchain: The Perspective Future of Technology," International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics (IJHISI), IGI Global, vol. 16(2), pages 1-20, April.
    2. Juyeon Son & Wonyoung Choi & Sang-Min Choi, 2020. "Trust information network in social Internet of things using trust-aware recommender systems," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 16(4), pages 15501477209, April.
    3. Ayodeji Falayi & Qianlong Wang & Weixian Liao & Wei Yu, 2023. "Survey of Distributed and Decentralized IoT Securities: Approaches Using Deep Learning and Blockchain Technology," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-28, May.
    4. Adnan Abid & Ansar Abbas & Adel Khelifi & Muhammad Shoaib Farooq & Razi Iqbal & Uzma Farooq, 2020. "An architectural framework for information integration using machine learning approaches for smart city security profiling," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 16(10), pages 15501477209, October.
    5. Manju Biswas & Debashis Das & Sourav Banerjee & Amrit Mukherjee & Waleed AL-Numay & Utpal Biswas & Yudong Zhang, 2023. "Blockchain-Enabled Communication Framework for Secure and Trustworthy Internet of Vehicles," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-19, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:121-:d:1107345. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.