Systematic Review to Propose a Blockchain-based Digital Forensic Ready Internet Voting System

Abstract

The ballot paper-based voting system has a high risk of data manipulation and vote tampering due to a lack of immutability, transparency and privacy. This systematic review is conducted with the intention of proposing a digital forensic-ready internet voting process to mitigate issues of vote rigging and vote fraud. The review focused on current and up-to-date literature. Publications that are out of this date range were ignored and considered stale or irrelevant. We extracted and reviewed publications with either or all the following keywords: “digital forensic”, “internet voting”, “e-voting” and “blockchain”. A total of thirteen databases were consulted. These include ACM, IEEE, Web of Science, Science Direct, Academic Search Complete, Access Science, ProQuest, Oxford Academy, Ingenta, Cambridge Core and Clarivate. From the inclusion list of one hundred and five (105) studies that were looked at in detail, twenty of them (i.e.,19%) covered blockchain technology. Two percent (2%) of them were focused on digital forensics in internet voting. The results herein were synthesised and presented in a qualitative methodology. The review shows that a secure and reliable digital forensic system could effectively mitigate vote rigging and fraud. Therefore, we proposed a blockchain-based digital forensic-ready internet voting system. The proposed system is beneficial to the electorate, election observers, electoral candidates, electoral administration bodies as well as the national law enforcement agencies.