Quantum Anonymous Veto (QAV) protocols enable secure and anonymous decision-making by allowing participants to detect the presence of a veto without revealing individual choices. While existing QAV schemes offer strong theoretical guarantees, they face significant limitations in practical implementation due to resource requirements, scalability issues, and the need for multipartite entanglement. In this work, we propose a novel deterministic QAV protocol that leverages only bipartite entanglement in the form of Bell states and achieves conclusive veto detection in a single round. Our approach eliminates the need for multi-qubit entangled states and iterative rounds, thereby significantly reducing experimental overhead and enhancing scalability. The protocol preserves critical properties such as voter anonymity, correctness, and verifiability, making it well-suited for implementation on near-term quantum devices. Furthermore, we outline a practical photonic realization based on polarization-path encoding and discrete-time quantum walks, demonstrating its feasibility within current quantum optical platforms. This work contributes a resource-efficient and experimentally viable alternative to existing QAV schemes, advancing the prospects of secure quantum decision-making in distributed systems.
Quantum Anonymous Veto (QAV) protocols enable secure and anonymous decision-making by allowing participants to detect the presence of a veto without revealing individual choices. While existing QAV schemes offer strong theoretical guarantees, they face significant limitations in practical implementation due to resource requirements, scalability issues, and the need for multipartite entanglement. In this work, we propose a novel deterministic QAV protocol that leverages only bipartite entanglement in the form of Bell states and achieves conclusive veto detection in a single round. Our approach eliminates the need for multi-qubit entangled states and iterative rounds, thereby significantly reducing experimental overhead and enhancing scalability. The protocol preserves critical properties such as voter anonymity, correctness, and verifiability, making it well-suited for implementation on near-term quantum devices. Furthermore, we outline a practical photonic realization based on polarization-path encoding and discrete-time quantum walks, demonstrating its feasibility within current quantum optical platforms. This work contributes a resource-efficient and experimentally viable alternative to existing QAV schemes, advancing the prospects of secure quantum decision-making in distributed systems.
Abstract We propose a set of protocols for quantum anonymous veto (QAV) broadly categorized under the probabilistic, iterative, and deterministic schemes. The schemes are based upon different types of quantum resources. Specifically, they may be viewed as single photon-based, bipartite and multipartite entangled states-based, orthogonal state-based and conjugate coding-based. The set of the proposed schemes is analyzed for all the requirements of a valid QAV scheme (e.g., privacy, verifiability, robustness, binding, eligibility and correctness). The proposed schemes are observed to be more efficient in comparison to the existing QAV schemes and robust up to the moderate decoherence rate. In addition, a trade-off between correctness and robustness of the probabilistic QAV schemes is observed. Further, the multipartite dense coding based deterministic QAV scheme is most efficient scheme among the set of schemes proposed here. A bipartite entanglement based iterative scheme employing dense coding is yet another efficient and practical scheme. The intrinsic connections between dining cryptographer-net with anonymous veto-net is also explored in the process of designing new protocols.
Abstract To remove any trusted third party from the voting scheme, a new primitive quantum secure multiparty exclusive OR protocol based on Measurement-Device-Independence (MDI) is presented by utilizing entanglement swapping of Bell states. Based on this primitive protocol of quantum secure multiparty protocol, a novel quantum anonymous veto voting scheme is constructed, which can meet complete security attributes. Especially, this scheme does not need any third party to count the votes, while all voters can tally the voting results by themselves. At the same time, blockchain is introduced for supervision, so that the voters can verify the validity of the voting content under extreme circumstances. The voting scheme takes Bell states as quantum resources and only performs Bell states identification based on the principle of MDI, so it is feasible to implement this scheme with the present quantum information processing technologies. Finally, the proposed voting scheme is simulated in IBM Qiskit, and the simulation results show that this scheme is correct and feasible.
Anonymous voting enables no one to link a vote and a voter and it has been widely used in contexts such as governmental elections and decision making in groups. In this paper we propose a resource-efficient self-tallying quantum anonymous voting (SQAV) protocol with two-particle entangled states. Similar to the first SQAV protocol with multipartite entangled states [Phys. Rev. A 94, 022333 (2016)], it possesses the properties of privacy, nonreusability, verifiability, fairness, binding, and self-tallying at the same time. We analyze its performance in a noisy quantum network. Our protocol requires mn[1+log2(n+1)] qubits to prepare the information states, and its quantum resource cost is lower than that of the first SQAV protocol, where n2log2m+nlog2n qubits are required to prepare the information states. We also prove the optimality of our quantum resource cost. To be more practical, it is further generalized to the case with three kinds of votes including positive votes, negative votes, and abstaining from voting. Our generalized protocol requires n(2m+1)[1+log2(n+1)] qubits to prepare the information states, which also has lower quantum resource cost than that of the improved SQAV protocol [IEEE Trans. Inf. Forens. Secur. 17, 3264 (2022)], where n2log2(2m+1)+nlog2n qubits are required to prepare the information states. In contrast to multipartite entangled states, two-particle entangled states are relatively easy to prepare, which makes the proposed protocol feasible using current technology.
Voting is one of the most prominent components of democracy. The one-vote veto, which requires the voting result to be only “yes” or “no”, is a particularly noteworthy type of voting with widespread application. When obtaining a “no” result, no useful information about the number of “no” votes and who votes “no” is disclosed. In this paper, we introduce a protocol for anonymous one-vote veto utilizing qubits and local Pauli operations Z and X, building simple processes for easy implementation under the current technology. For better elaboration, we give two examples: all voters cast “yes” votes and only one voter casts a "no." Then, the corresponding experiment tests are conducted on the simulated IBM quantum computer to verify their feasibility.We also show that the proposed protocol has the desirable properties of privacy, fairness, verifiability and robustness. Furthermore, we analyze the proposed protocol’s security against cheating from eavesdroppers, a semi-honest server and malicious voters. This work is the first attempt to illustrate how qubits can be useful for building a secure anonymous one-vote veto strategy.
Abstract As a special voting method, one‐vote veto voting also has a wide range of applications. A veto means that when the voting council puts forward a proposal, it cannot pass unless all the voters agree to it. If there is a no vote, the proposal will be rejected, but no one will know how anyone else votes. In most existing quantum anonymous one‐vote veto voting protocols, an absolutely honest third party is generally required to assist the voting. However, it is difficult to find a fully trusted third party in reality. In addition, the existing quantum anonymous one‐vote veto protocol does not consider the attack from the insider voters. Therefore, based on the characteristics of entanglement swapping between the Cat state and Bell state, the authors propose a new quantum anonymous one‐vote veto protocol, which can not only calculate the voting result quickly and effectively but also demonstrate higher security.
Abstract In order to construct unconditionally secure anonymous countable veto protocol, we proposed a measurement-device-independent quantum secure multiparty authenticated summation protocol. This protocol adopts perfect quantum encryption and one-time pad to achieve unconditional security. In addition, the protocol uses the weak coherent pulses of the BB84 state as the quantum resource, and only needs to perform Bell state identification to complete the calculation. Combined with the idea of grouping, it is applied to the quantum anonymous veto voting scenario, which ensures the anonymity of the protocol. Under the semi-honest model, the security of the designed protocol is proved. It can satisfy the correctness, security and relatively complete voting attributes. Finally, IBM Qiskit is used to carry out simulation experiments, and the experimental results verify the correctness and feasibility of the protocol.