A team of researchers from the International Institute of Information Technology - Hyderabad (IIIT-H) has pressed for a simpler blockchain-based polling system that would make casting votes both safer and scalable.
In a research paper titled “FASTEN: Fair and Secure Distributed Voting Using Smart Contracts”, Prof. Sujit Gujar from IIIT-H’s Machine Learning lab, and his students Sankarshan Damle and Moin Hussain, made a case that would simplify handling sensitive data.
Prof. Gujar opined that despite several blockchain voting solutions which ensure that manipulation does not take place, anonymity of voters is maintained, and multiple voting is kept at bay, there are no solutions that could be scaled for the sheer number of voters in India.
While on the one hand, homomorphic encryption, a method that does not compromise privacy and deals with encrypted data without having to decrypt it, is available, the method proposed by the team involves simple public key encryption by distributing decryption across the network.
“With this being a distributed network, no single entity can cheat. Homomorphic encryptions are computationally very heavy. By using simpler public key cryptosystems, the process will also be quicker,” a communication quoted Prof. Gujar.
