International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056 Volume: 06 Issue: 09 | Sep 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072 © 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.34 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 1380 An Introduction to Blockchain Based E-Voting System Adarsh Vernekar 1 Department of Computer Science & Engineering, SVERI’s College of Engineering, Pandharpur, Maharashtra, India ---------------------------------------------------------------------***---------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract - For any democracy election acts like a basic building block. Any threat to election process is a threat to national security. It has been a big challenge to build a secure E-voting system that satisfies all the basic requirements. Blockchain has wide applications as it offers distributed ledger technologies .This paper reviews a study of blockchain technology in distributed electronic voting systems. Moreover the paper focuses on legal technical and security issues. It also focuses on the requirements to establish a decentralized E- voting system. Also the paper evaluates potential of blockchain technology to establish a secure, cost efficient, transparent fraud less and improved E- voting system. The paper outlines the potential of the blockchain technology to establish a secure, cost efficient, transparent fraud less and improved E- voting system that can be established throughout a nation. Key Words: Blockchain, e-voting, smart contract. 1. INTRODUCTION According to the today’s social environment a fair and Transparent election has become an intense need for today’s society. The current ballot system does not offer transparency in counting of votes. There are several threats of voting frauds, like fake voters, frauds in the polling booths etc. So, an intense need for establishment of secure decentralized fraud less, voting system came into existence. Electronic decentralized voting system using blockchain can overcome all the issues in traditional voting systems. Blockchain provides various properties due to its decentralized ledger technology. Blockchain is a decentralized computational & information sharing platform which enables multiple authority domain who do not trust on each other but they cooperate and collaborate in certain decision making process. Blockchain was firstly introduced in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto & implemented in 2009. The basic property of blockchain is that it uses add and append only strategy. In Blockchain we cannot delete the existing data. Blockchain uses peer to peer network systems. Blockchain is a chain of blocks that includes all the information of user through distributed ledger technology. The concept of block interconnection was evaluated from Merkle tree by Ralph Merkle. Every node is labeled with a cryptographic hash of a block data. Thereby a non-leaf node is labeled with a cryptographic hash of labels of child nodes. Hence all the blocks are interconnected any change in blockchain can be easily detected. 2. NEED OF BLOCKCHAIN IN E-VOTING To carry out a national election certain e voting system should ensure many of the security requirements. They can be listed as  Voting system should not be traceable  The voting system should ensure whether the voter’s vote was counted & proof of vote should be provided.  Election system should not enable single entity to control systems.  Election system should allow only eligible individuals to participate in voting.  The Election system should not be expensive.  The election system should provide limited access to participants depending on their roles. The use of blockchain Technology in E-Voting system can meet all the above needs as a blockchain is tamperproof and non-alterable. 3. PRELIMINARIES IN E-VOTING Before implementation of an E-Voting system using blockchain the type of blockchain used into the system must be considered. The blockchain can be categorized into basic three types, Private, Public and consortium blockchain. A public blockchain grants access to read and create to any user in the network e.g. Bitcoin in a private blockchain there are certain limitations over read and write access to participants. While a consortium Blockchain is a partially decentralized Blockchain in which consensus process is controlled by selected set of nodes called as validators. In our case we use a permissioned blockchain with variation in consortium based chain as it is more efficient. The first implementation of blockchain was bitcoin. The bitcoin uses Proof of Work consensus algorithm .Consensus is a procedure to reach a common agreement in a certain decentralized platform. There are various consensus algorithms according to the applications. Another consensus algorithm Proof of stake was implemented in Peercoin crypto currency. It provided increased protection and prevented the problem of high power consumption of servers. In our case we use Proof of Authority consensus algorithm. Here the transactions are validated by the approved users called as validators. The process of validation is automated such that there is no need of constant monitoring. These selected nodes on the network validate and certify the transactions on the blockchain.