Paper 2023/694

VeriVoting: A decentralized, verifiable and privacy-preserving scheme for weighted voting

Xiaohan Yue, Shenyang University of Technology
Abstract

Decentralization, verifiability, and privacy-preserving are three fundamental properties of modern e-voting. In this paper, we conduct extensive investigations into them and present a novel e-voting scheme, VeriVoting, which is the first to satisfy these properties. More specifically, decentralization is realized through blockchain technology and the distribution of decryption power among competing entities, such as candidates. Furthermore, verifiability is satisfied when the public verifies the ballots and decryption keys. And finally, bidirectional unlinkability is achieved to help preserve privacy by decoupling voter identity from ballot content. Following the ideas above, we first leverage linear homomorphic encryption schemes and non-interactive zero-knowledge argument systems to construct a voting primitive, SemiVoting, which meets decentralization, decryption-key verifiability, and ballot privacy. To further achieve ballot ciphertext verifiability and anonymity, we extend this primitive with blockchain and verifiable computation to finally arrive at VeriVoting. Through security analysis and per-formance evaluations, VeriVoting offers a new trade-off between security and efficiency that differs from all previous e-voting schemes and provides a radically novel practical ap-proach to large-scale elections.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Preprint.
Keywords
Decentralizationverifiabilityprivacy-preservingVoting
Contact author(s)
xhyue @ sut edu cn
History
2023-05-16: approved
2023-05-16: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2023/694
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2023/694,
      author = {Xiaohan Yue},
      title = {VeriVoting: A decentralized, verifiable and privacy-preserving scheme for weighted voting},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2023/694},
      year = {2023},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/694}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/694}
}
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