Problems of traditional voting tools

• Insufficient protection from fraud for both in-person and absentee voting models
• Requirement of physical presence for the in-person voting model

Blockchain advantages

Voting results recorded to the blockchain cannot be altered. The service also enables anonymous use of evidence with zero disclosure of recorded votes, and every user can make sure their vote has been counted.

Controllability

Only identified users who have the correct rights can interact with the system and access the service. Administrators can create polls and participants can vote. All participants’ actions are automatically verified by a smart contract and recorded to a trusted registry.

Confidentiality

The anonymity of voting is enabled by homomorphic encryption, which hides the link between a participant’s identifier and their choice but shows that their vote has been counted. Vote counting is also encrypted, and the poll organizer can see only the final results.

Reliability

The voting mechanism rules out tampering or replacement of data at any stage of the process. A smart contract prevents unauthorized users from voting. Voting results are protected by cryptographic algorithms and data immutability is guaranteed by the blockchain’s principles of operation.

Verifiability

A distributed blockchain network, such as the one on which the solution is based, facilitates the creation of a secure contour for organizing independent polls without a centralized authority required to count votes. It also enables verification of the authenticity of votes by all authorized users.

Consistency

Thanks to the use of blockchain, all data pertaining to voting results is stored in a decentralized way. The consistency of data is enabled by a consensus algorithm that allows each system user to obtain the same version of the truth.

Throughput

The Waves Enterprise network, which is the core of the digital voting system, has a high throughput. The unique blockchain architecture, based on PoS and PoA consensus algorithms, facilitates processing of up to 1,000 transactions per second, enabling large-scale voting events.

User-friendliness

The system’s user-friendly interface enables timely receipt of notifications for voting, efficient and transparent interaction with the blockchain, checking the correctness of displayed information, and the creation of reports based on voting outcomes.

Voting process

In simplified form, the process works as follows

1. An administrator creates a new poll and adds users
2. Users receive email notifications about the new poll, follow a link and find out further details of the poll
3. On the appointed day, users vote
4. Each ballot is encrypted and stored in a smart contract, waiting for further processing
5. Upon completion of voting, the process of vote counting and decryption of final results begins
6. The smart contract publishes unencrypted final results.

Advantages compared to regular voting processes

Attracts more voters due to high throughput of the decentralized network Creation of transparent and trusted voting procedures Reducing overheads by eliminating printing and processing of physical ballots

The service is relevant for

• Limited companies
• Public companies
• Credit cooperatives
• Bank organizations
• Condominium partnerships
• Management companies
• Municipal and federal elections

Solution elements

The solution consists of a video camera, recording the building’s entrance; the Enterprise Node, which could be deployed on any laptop with internet access; a containerized smart contract with a neural network responsible for facial recognition; and a frontend application providing functionality for viewing attendance statistics, adding new employees, and interacting with the smart contract and Node.

How it works

A live video stream from the camera is fed to the Frontend Application for the security guards to view directly, if necessary.

The video stream is broken down into images, which are sent to the Node as a series of transactions.

The Node passes the transactions to the smart contract.

Whenever the smart contract recognizes a face, it records on the blockchain that the relevant employee has entered, with their personal ID and a timestamp. The application also records images and timestamps of unknown faces, in order to keep track of strangers or in case the neural network fails to recognize an employee.

The Node stores these transactions, aggregates daily and monthly statistics, and broadcasts them to the network. The Frontend Application displays this information and statistics.

Since all nodes in the network share the same transaction history, altering a record would require that a majority of nodes agree a fraudulent consensus and rewrite multiple blocks — ensuring protection against attacks. Similarly, as transactions are appended to the existing history only if consensus is agreed beforehand by a majority of network nodes, fraudulent transactions on the private blockchain are virtually impossible.

Advantages

The use of blockchain leads to reduced paperwork and dramatically decreased human error and administrative costs.