Electronic voting systems are increasingly exposed to security risks, including cyberattacks and threats. These concerns are expected to grow with the development of quantum computing, which may break many classical encryption methods. This paper proposes a secure voting system that combines Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), Dual-Key Symmetric Encryption, and auditable receipts to improve the privacy, security, and reliability of the voting process. The system allows voters to exchange encryption keys securely, submit encrypted votes, and receive confirmation receipts without revealing their vote content. To test the system, quantum and classical communication were simulated using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) messaging. The results show that the system can securely process a large number of votes with low delay and minimal errors. This approach provides a practical and forward-looking solution for building secure and verifiable electronic voting systems in the quantum era.
Electronic voting systems are increasingly exposed to security risks, including cyberattacks and threats. These concerns are expected to grow with the development of quantum computing, which may break many classical encryption methods. This paper proposes a secure voting system that combines Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), Dual-Key Symmetric Encryption, and auditable receipts to improve the privacy, security, and reliability of the voting process. The system allows voters to exchange encryption keys securely, submit encrypted votes, and receive confirmation receipts without revealing their vote content. To test the system, quantum and classical communication were simulated using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) messaging. The results show that the system can securely process a large number of votes with low delay and minimal errors. This approach provides a practical and forward-looking solution for building secure and verifiable electronic voting systems in the quantum era.
The rapid advancement of internet technology has raised attention to the importance of electronic voting in maintaining democracy and fairness in elections. E-voting refers to the use of electronic technology to facilitate the casting and counting of votes in elections. The need for designated verification arises from concerns about voter privacy, auditability, and the prevention of manipulation. Traditional e-voting systems use cryptographic techniques for security but lack verifiable proof of integrity. Integrating e-voting with a quantum designated verifier could address these challenges by leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics to enhance security and trustworthiness. In light of this, we propose a quantum e-voting scheme that uses a designated verifier signature. To ensure the confidentiality and authenticity of the voting process, the scheme uses quantum features like the no-cloning theorem and quantum key distribution. The proposed scheme has security properties like source hiding, non-transferability, and message anonymity. The proposed scheme is resistant to many quantum attacks, such as eavesdropping and impersonation. Due to designated verification, the scheme minimizes the risk of tempering. This paper provides a detailed description of the proposed scheme and analyzes its security properties. Therefore, the proposed scheme is efficient, practical, and secure.
Ensuring the security and integrity of voting systems is crucial for maintaining democratic processes. With the rise of cyber threats targeting electronic voting, traditional cryptographic methods are proving inadequate in safeguarding against sophisticated attacks. Quantum cryptography, particularly Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), offers a promising solution to enhance the security of voting systems by leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics. This research explores the application of quantum cryptography in secure voting, highlighting its potential to address vulnerabilities in current systems. The study examines the technological, practical, and legal challenges of implementing quantum-based voting systems, including infrastructure requirements and public acceptance. Furthermore, it assesses how quantum cryptography ensures voter privacy, prevents tampering, and provides robust protection against future quantum computing threats. While significant hurdles remain, the integration of quantum cryptographic techniques presents a transformative opportunity to create more secure and transparent voting processes. This paper outlines the roadmap for adopting quantum cryptography in voting systems and its potential impact on electoral integrity.
In the age of digital transformation, the integrity and security of online voting systems have become a growing concern. Traditional cryptography methods are vulnerable to advances in quantum computing, demanding the need for more secure alternatives. This paper explores the application of quantum cryptography in enhancing the security of blockchain-based voting systems, a decentralized and transparent approach to conduct elections. We introduce a novel quantum-resistant voting protocol that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) with post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, ensuring secure voter authentication, vote casting, and tallying. The methodology combines quantum encryption with blockchain's immutability to create a tamper-proof voting ledger, preventing unauthorized access and vote manipulation. It gives an analysis of potential real-world implementations, positioning a hybrid quantum-blockchain framework as a promising solution for future secure electronic voting systems.
The expansion of quantum computing puts classical cryptographic systems at risk, and thus there is a need for quantum-resistant solutions to secure messaging and e-voting. This paper introduces a two-in-one application developed with Flask (backend), Firebase (database), and IBM Quantum (live QKD operations), secured by the BB84 Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol. The messaging module uses BB84 to produce unbreakable encryption keys by way of photon polarization, and the evoting system encrypts votes using quantum keys, providing end-to-end security. Firebase stores user information and anonymous votes securely, and Flask oversees serverside logic, including real-time quantum key generation through IBM Quantum’s cloud-based quantum processors. The incorporation of IBM Quantum’s Qiskit framework allows for real-time simulation and running of BB84, with error rates below 3% in quantum channel tests. Tamper-evident logs and decentralized verification are used in place of centralized databases for e-voting, which reduces fraud vulnerabilities. Real-world implementation shows that the system can scale, as Firebase supports 1,000+ concurrent users and IBM Quantum provides sub-second latency for key generation. This paper tackles weaknesses of traditional systems by combining quantum cryptography with contemporary full-stack technologies, offering a solid, deployable solution for electoral integrity and secure communication.
Abstract To better protect the privacy of voters, a receipt-free quantum voting protocol is first proposed, which adopts quantum key agreement and quantum public key encryption with single photons. We employ Lagrange interpolation polynomials and random numbers to blind the voting information on the bulletin board, so that it can minimize the public information. Furthermore, our receipt-free quantum voting protocol is information-theoretically secure, i.e., the eavesdropper cannot get any voting information by collecting both the quantum ciphertext and the public information. In addition, compared with the existing quantum voting protocols, our protocol can meet more security attributes, such as anonymity, unrepeatability, verifiability legitimacy and especially, receipt-freeness.
Electronic voting (e-voting) has emerged as a transformative technology in the modern digital era. Many countries across the world are using e-voting systems in different types of elections, from political to non-political. One of the primary goals of e-voting is ensuring both verifiability and privacy simultaneously, which we refer to as security. Verifiability is a security feature that guarantees voters can confirm their vote is reflected in the final election result, while privacy guarantees that no one is able to link a vote to the voter who cast it. Verifiability needs to hold only for the duration of the election, whereas privacy needs to extend beyond the election period, even decades after the election. This property, known as everlasting privacy in the literature, ensures that even computationally unbounded adversaries cannot compromise voter privacy, securing elections against future advances in computing, including quantum computing. Researchers have proposed a wide variety of protocols to achieve this ambitious goal in secure e-voting, however, these protocols differ significantly, making the analysis and state-of-the-art complicated. In this thesis, we first address this fragmentation by systematically analyzing all existing e-voting protocols designed to ensure everlasting privacy. We map out the relationships and dependencies among these protocols, evaluate their security and efficiency under realistic assumptions, and identify unresolved challenges in the field. Our work provides a foundational reference for researchers aiming to design secure e-voting systems with everlasting privacy, paving the way for privacypreserving elections in the post-quantum era. Building on these insights, we propose a novel e-voting system that integrates the best practices from prior research while addressing their limitations. Leveraging the Hyperion scheme as a foundation, we develop an enhanced protocol that not only guarantees everlasting privacy but also introduces everlasting receipt-freeness and coercion mitigation. Unlike existing systems like Selene and Hyperion, which rely on computational assumptions for privacy, our protocol offers privacy even against adversaries with unlimited computational power. In secure electronic voting systems with everlasting privacy, the focus is on futureproofing privacy, while sometimes election verifiability relies on the computational soundness of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), which are vulnerable to quantum adversaries. Therefore, a key technical challenge is designing e-voting systems with efficient post-quantum cryptographic primitives to secure both privacy and verifiability against quantum attacks. In this thesis, we advance the state of post-quantum ZKPs by focusing on the ZKPs proposed by Jain et al., which are based on the conservative Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) assumption. We optimize the efficiency of these ZKPs, achieve formal security verification using EasyCrypt, and uncover flaws in existing implementations, demonstrating their vulnerability to malicious provers. Additionally, we construct the first code-based ZKP of shuffle, enabling a verifiable and privacy-preserving e-voting protocol with mixing-based tallying. Our e-voting system ensures both verifiability and vote privacy through the computational difficulty of decoding random linear codes, marking it as the first verifiable code-based e-voting system.