Enhanced Privacy and Security of Voters' Identity in an Interplanetary File System-Based E-Voting Process

Abstract

Blockchain technology is in demand due to its key properties, such as immutability, transparency, distributed storage, and non-centric controls. The election is the primary process for forming a government at local, state, or federal levels in any democratic country. A fair election increases people’s faith in their government. An electronic voting system is a safer solution during this pandemic for the democratic voting system. However, the electronic voting system has a number of potential issues, including security and privacy breaches, the fear of cyber-attacks, the hijacking of the session, and identity theft. Using Blockchain, we can overcome many security and privacy issues as Blockchain uses a cryptographic hash and digital signatures for sending and verifying transactions in the peer-to-peer Blockchain network. Identity management is a critical issue in the election system as many fake voters are available and in the traditional election system, many fake votes are counted. We proposed a system that generates the identity of voters using the tokens and stores them in the interplanetary file system (IPFS). The proposed system provides the storage of tokens and verification of tokens during various stages of polling. The proposed system implemented using the IPFS, as well as the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for the digital signature, and verification, and SHA-256 as a cryptographic hash. IPFS is used to store data in a distributed manner using the connected nodes in the network. In the proposed system, we use Go IPFS to store the files in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). IPFS can store any large file within any format. By splitting the user identity files, we can secure the data and privacy of voters in the Blockchain electronic voting system.