Blockchain Based Voting Systems

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Voting is an essential tool for any democratic government. It is the most important factor that makes the government for the people, by the people. It is surprising that many countries in the world haven’t moved on from traditional paper ballot system of voting. There are some countries that have taken a forward step by using Electronic voting ma- chines. As simple as it may sound, there are a lot of issues with these systems. Between having to physically go to the venues and standing in long queue at the polling station to counting the vote by hand the entire process is time consuming at the same time expensive. Malicious actors have many avenues to influence paper ballot based elections using intimidation at the polling booth by capturing the ballot box or stuffing the box by fake votes. Similarly, in Electronic voting machines, a highly motivated group can get hold of the machine and change the chip so whichever button is pressed, all the votes go to one political party. Another issue is it whether it is impossible to keep track of the votes. How can we be sure that our vote was counted or perhaps in case of ballot paper, not thrown away? The present article discusses ways of bringing voting systems into the 21st century by using the Blockchain Technolog