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Blockchain-Enabled Electronic Voting:
Experiments in Ukraine
Dmytro Khutkyy1[0000-0003-0786-2749]
1 European University Institute, Florence, Italy
khutkyy@gmail.com
Abstract. Proponents of blockchain technology state that it facilitates transpar-
ency, verifiability, and auditability. Thereby, sometimes it is promoted and tested
as an experimental e-voting design. In this relation, the contribution overviews
the three cases of e-voting in Ukraine based on blockchain. Considering the avail-
able data, the cases are compared in the aspects of integrity mechanisms, social
consensus arrangements, and political functions. It was found that despite differ-
ences in technology, all viewed e-voting systems allow remote internet voting,
rely on an e-voting organizer, and enable advanced voting transparency. Finally,
each consecutive blockchain-based e-voting initiative is more large-scale in the
number of voters and the role in policy making and politics.
Keywords: Electronic Voting, Internet Voting, Blockchain.
1 E-Voting on Blockchain
Being technically feasible, electronic voting (e-voting) is applied for non-binding sur-
veys, politically binding referendums, elections of public officials and other represent-
atives in many countries [1], as well as for voting for policies by policy makers them-
selves. Yet, e-voting might be contested because of technical malfunction, malicious
hacking, coercion, corrupt ballot counting, or other concerns [2]. To address some of
these challenges on technological level, distributed ledger technologies, such as block-
chain, strive to develop a more decentralized, transparent, verifiable, and auditable e-
voting. Since blockchain is a shared record of information stored in a way that is re-
sistant to manipulation, it has features that make it attractive as an electoral tool: it
might make elections more transparent and verifiable, given that voters could theoreti-
cally go back and check that their vote was properly registered on the blockchain and
counted in the election, all without broadcasting their identity to the rest of the world
[3]. The application of blockchain in online voting eliminates the need for recounting
the votes, enables an immediate calculation of the final result and is supposed to in-
crease the embattled trust in electronic voting [4]. Reportedly, e-voting systems based
on blockchain are being piloted in at least seven countries for party, government, and
other e-voting procedures, although on a small scale [5]. This paper summarizes the
three cases of blockchain-based electronic voting systems in Ukraine, albeit without
intending to evaluate their implementation, usage, success or failures.
238
2 Evidence from Ukraine
Considering possible risks associated with the struggle for power in real-life voting,
besides technical solutions such as encryption mechanisms, e-voting system integrity
highly depends on the scrutiny of its algorithms and accordance to the agreed voting
rules. Democratic and egalitarian potential of blockchains depends on the underlying
consensus protocols: considering potential problems selfishness and imbalances of
power, especially of core developers and users, it should possess sufficient safeguards
to protect the integrity of recorded transactions or votes [6]. Moreover, according to the
Council of Europe’s standards for e-voting, an e-voting system shall be auditable [7].
Therefore, wherever relevant information is available, technical consensus protocols,
social consensus arrangements, and integrity mechanisms are analyzed.
2.1 Planned Electronic Voting at a Local Council
The first e-voting system on blockchain in Ukraine, E-VOX:NaRada, was announced
in 2016. This voting system was envisaged as a tool for local councils to automatize the
process of voting, collecting cumulative data and publishing it on the Internet [8]. Con-
sidering the challenges associated with e-voting abuse in Ukraine’s authorities, includ-
ing instances of legally forbidden but practiced ‘delegated’ non-personal voting in the
Parliament, probably, advanced technical solution was sought to ensure and demon-
strate transparency, verifiability, auditability, and facilitate accountability.
E-VOX:NaRada is offered as a free open source license allowing council members
(first of all at Ukraine’s town council of Balta) to vote on plenary sessions and a web-
portal to publish voting results in full compliance with the Ukrainian legislation; this
electronic voting system based on blockchain technology is designed to ensure a com-
plete transparency of the voting process and eliminate falsifications [9]. The e-voting
system architect describes the system as follows: NaRada is a decentralized application
(dApp) developed as a smart contract on Ethereum with the client part as an application
on Android; the user’s level of this dApp consists of two groups of users: (1) organizers
–the Head of the City Council and the secretary; and (2) voters – Members of the City
Council; the organizer creates and validates voters accounts, creates agenda, starts and
stops voting sessions, while voters cast their votes [10]. The e-voting system open code
has been published in 2016 and 2017 and is available online [11]. Its design does intro-
duce a transparent and verifiable technological solution for e-voting. It still relies on a
kind of social consensus regarding roles in e-voting process and organization proce-
dures. Therefore, it is also important that the voting procedures comply with the legal
regulations of the local council in practice.
Besides, the system architect has outlined an alternative e-voting system concept in
a separate article. According to him, the algorithm is the following: (1) each voter
creates a blockchain address and informs it to the voting organizer; (2) the organizer
generates a multitransaction with a list of voters’ addresses and sends each person a
coin to vote and a coin to pay the transaction fee; (3) the organizer determines the voting
addresses (e.g. one address is assigned ‘For’ and the other ‘Against’, or there are mul-
tiple candidates’ addresses) and informs the voters about them; (4) voters, in turn, send
the received coin to the chosen address thereby expressing their will; (5) the address
239
which has scored more ‘voting’ coins wins, thereby the decision is transparent and au-
tomatic [12]. Such design also technically enables the possibility of a secret blockchain
voting. It is similar to the previous procedure, but with several preceding stages: (i)
having fulfilled the required authorization conditions (e.g. by sending passport data or
via an authorized account) the voter creates a blockchain address, encrypts it and sends
it to the organizer; (ii) the organizer imposes a cryptographic Chaum’s blind signature
[13] to the encrypted address and returns it to the voter; (iii) the voter removes the
encryption from the received data and sends to the organizer the address with the or-
ganizer’s signature, but anonymously; (iv) having recognized the signature the organ-
izer adds the received address to the voting coins’ distribution list, but without identi-
fying the owner of the address [14]. Such algorithm does enable voting secrecy and
automatic vote count. Similarly to the previous e-voting protocol, the responsibility of
issuing ballots and identifying voters rests with the e-voting organizer. Therefore, for
the system integrity, the organizer should be held accountable.
In any case, neither of these blockchain-enabled e-voting designs have been intro-
duced in Ukrainian local councils yet.
2.2 Completed Internet Voting for the Elections to the Supervisory Board
An e-voting system using distributed ledger and applying blockchain principles has
been utilized for politically binding internet elections (i-elections) to the Supervisory
Board of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation (the Supervisory Board) in 2017. Ukrain-
ian Cultural Foundation (the Foundation) is a public institution on cultural policy
guided and coordinated by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine (the Ministry). The Su-
pervisory Board is an advisory body to the Foundation comprised of nine persons: one
is the Foundation Head; two are appointed by the President; two are appointed by the
Ministry; two are elected via an internet voting by cultural institutions, and two are
elected via an internet voting by civil society organizations in cultural sphere [15]. The
representatives elected by cultural institutions and by civil society organizations will
be further named ‘the Representatives.’ Elected by stakeholders and comprising almost
half of the Supervisory Board they bring a democratic voice to national policy making
in arts and culture. The format of internet voting is supposed to increase transparency
similarly to other cases of e-voting in Ukraine [16]. For example, since 2015 internet
elections were held to public councils at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of
Ukraine [17], although using different, non-blockchain technologies.
There were two internet elections to the Supervisory Board: one for the representa-
tives of cultural institutions and another – for the representatives of civil society organ-
izations. As both i-voting webpages read: (a) each vote is inscribed in a voting ballot
and is saved as an electronic document signed with an electronic digital signature of a
person entitled to vote; (b) it is impossible to modify a signed ballot without ruining its
integrity and its link with the electronic digital signature; (c) the use of an electronic
digital signature allows to verify the integrity of a ballot and to identify its signer; (d)
legally electronic digital signature is equal to a handwritten signature; (e) the electronic
protocol is formed automatically [18, 19]. Indeed, the webpage of the first e-voting lists
the full electronic protocol, which starts with a digitally signed control token, continues
240
with 102 digitally signed entries, and ends with a digitally signed control token. The
same is true for the webpage of the second e-voting, the only difference is the number
of digitally signed entries – 76. All these transactions are dated consecutively with the
precision to minutes and have been performed during the two weeks of 13-27 October
2017. Each transaction is accompanied by a ballot and an encrypted digital signature.
Each protocol entry has a number, the name of the chosen candidate, the name of the
candidate's organization, the voting date and time, as well as the link to the ballot and
an encrypted digital signature.
Given its i-voting design, it is an open voting. Each ballot discloses the name of the
voting organization. The e-voting source code is not explicitly published online. Prob-
ably, this is due to complex requirements to licensing digital software used by public
agencies that is coordinated by the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, both e-voting webpages, both lists of candidates, and both tickets starting
e-voting were programmed and are available online as open data in structured XML
format. According to the system architect, during the voting the list of voters was avail-
able in XML format too [20]. This displays high transparency.
This e-voting structure is based on blockchain principles, although there is the voter
organizer (the Foundation) with special functions unavailable to voters. The Foundation
serves as the organizing node that signs the list of candidates (the voter registry), starts
and finishes the e-voting. Thereby the organizer node prevents the emergence of alter-
native e-voting chains and ‘throw-in’ of votes before or after the voting period protect-
ing the integrity of the i-elections. In turn, each voter (a Representative) acts as a node
continuing the chain with a signature. Thus each voter node protects the integrity of
previous votes and its own vote. In addition, according to the system architect, each
voter received a signed copy of bulletin and all previous votes via email [21]. Due to
this any voter was able to prove how its vote was cast. Thereby, transparency, verifia-
bility, and auditability of this e-voting system were indeed ensured.
2.3 Experimented Electronic Voting for National Elections
Another blockchain e-voting system was announced in 2018. It was intended to be ap-
plied on the scale of nation-wide elections. Reportedly, the Head of the State Register
at the Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine (the Commission) has run a blockchain
voting pilot: he created a test vote using 28 blockchain nodes, invited the public to vote,
and concluded that the Commission continues a series of experiments applying the se-
cure blockchain technology within electoral voting [22]. The social media post of the
Head of the State Register at the Central Electoral Commission demonstrates an elec-
tronic voting form, although the displayed form link is an offline file [23]. As neither
public hyperlink to the voting form nor the source code were provided by the Commis-
sion in the post, this hindered an independent examination of this e-voting system.
Therefore, this case can be labelled as a reported non-binding e-voting experiment for
national elections allegedly utilizing blockchain technology. Since e-voting has been
inscribed in the governmental Concept Paper and the Action Plan for the Development
of Electronic Democracy in Ukraine in 2017 [24], e-voting is on government’s agenda,
yet its specific technology and prospects are still unclear.
241
3 Conclusions on Blockchain-Based E-Voting in Ukraine
The presented cases of Ukrainian e-voting systems based on blockchain demonstrate
several marked differences and similarities. Evidently, these ventures differ in technical
solutions. Also, the degree of an e-voting system technical documentation availability
in open access is in reverse proportion to its e-voting scale. The nation-wide e-voting
system lacks published comprehensive technical documentation, the e-voting system
for the supervisory board is available in a structured open data format, and the e-voting
system for a local council has its source code published online. Considering this, for
public e-voting and e-elections an enhanced transparency will be required. Still, these
e-voting initiatives reveal common patterns. All the three e-voting systems used allow
remote internet voting. This shows their potential to scale up. All of them represent
versions of a distributed ledger with an e-voting organizer. Given the necessity to ad-
minister voter registers, initiate and finish voting process this is anticipated. Overall,
this dynamic experimentation performed independently by multiple actors employing
diverse technologies reflects a vibrant Ukrainian civic-tech and gov-tech ecosystem,
where IT community, civil society and authorities cooperate for the public good. Fi-
nally, each blockchain-based e-voting undertaking is more ambitious in terms of scope.
While the first one was designed for the internal use of local council members, the
second one was conducted publicly among institutions and civil society organizations
online, and the third one aspires to be used for binding national elections. This reveals
the evolution of e-voting ambition in Ukraine and demonstrates the potential of wider
use of blockchain-based systems in non-binding and binding e-voting for policies as
well as in e-elections for advisory councils and public offices.
Acknowledgements
This work has been prepared within the framework of the Policy Leader Fellowship at
the School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute.
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