A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy

Patrick McCorry; Siamak F.  Shahandashti; Feng Hao

Paper 2017/110

A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy

Patrick McCorry, Siamak F. Shahandashti, and Feng Hao

Abstract

We present the first implementation of a decentralised and self-tallying internet voting protocol with maximum voter privacy using the Blockchain. The Open Vote Network is suitable for boardroom elec- tions and is written as a smart contract for Ethereum. Unlike previously proposed Blockchain e-voting protocols, this is the first implementation that does not rely on any trusted authority to compute the tally or to protect the voter’s privacy. Instead, the Open Vote Network is a self- tallying protocol, and each voter is in control of the privacy of their own vote such that it can only be breached by a full collusion involving all other voters. The execution of the protocol is enforced using the consensus mechanism that also secures the Ethereum blockchain. We tested the implementation on Ethereum’s official test network to demonstrate its feasibility. Also, we provide a financial and computational breakdown of its execution cost.

Note: Implementation can be found here https://github.com/stonecoldpat/anonymousvoting

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Implementation
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2017
Contact author(s): patrick mccorry @ ncl ac uk
History: 2017-02-14: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2017/110
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2017/110,
      author = {Patrick McCorry and Siamak F.  Shahandashti and Feng Hao},
      title = {A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2017/110},
      year = {2017},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/110}
}