Blockchain-Based Electronic Voting System: Significance and Requirements

Table 1

Review on the types of voting systems.

Category	Description
Paper-based	Voters usually mark their voting choices by hand on the ballot paper, and then the ballots are manually numbered. This type can be categorized into on-site and remote voting. The on-site voting category refers to the process of casting a ballot by the voter in person at a ballot box. However, the remote voting category refers to the process of casting a ballot by email or other methods
Mechanical lever	A mechanical lever voting machine was first used in the 1890s to record votes in an election operation without paper. The voter indicates his choice by pressing a lever beside the desired candidate. When the voter has finished voting, he pulls the lever another time, which increments the counters corresponding to his choice by one unit, and the machine prepares the next voter
Punched-card	Punched-card is a voting method developed in the 1960s. This method used Hollerith cards (or punched cards) where voters used a stylus to punch out chads related to their desired candidate choices. Next, the Hollerith card was introduced in a ballot box. Thereafter, a card reader counted these punched cards
Direct recording electronic (DRE)	DRE voting system was first used in the early 1990s in the United States. In this voting system, vote selections are recorded directly onto computer memory. Voters use touch screens, push buttons, or dials to interact with the DRE system. DRE presents some security and reliability issues
Optical scanning systems	An optical scanning voting system permits a voter to mark his choices directly on machine-readable ballots in voting response locations. An optical scanner and computer software and hardware are used to read marked ballots and count the results
Vote recorder	Vote recorders (or ballot-marking devices) neither classify nor store ballots, but solely let the voter record the votes on ballots that are later stored and classified elsewhere. Voters make voting choices and next, generate a human-readable ballot without recording the vote electronically
I-voting	I-voting systems are called in the literature mobile voting, remote electronic voting, or online voting systems in which ballots are transmitted and recorded over the Internet. The blockchain-based electronic voting system is a type of i-voting, which is based on the Internet and uses a network that uses blockchain to vote and count votes in a national election