© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

Terms Privacy Legal Notice

arXiv:2510.15243

Quantum Voting Protocol for Centralized and Distributed Voting Based on Phase-Flip Counting

Aydin, Ali Emre, Ammar Daskin

Published Oct 17, 2025• 0 citations

Abstract

We introduce a quantum voting protocol that uses superposition and entanglement to enable anonymous voting with trusted voting machines, in a centralized setting with a single machine and in a distributed setting where several machines are linked to a voting center through quantum channels. A voter selects a candidate through a restricted ballot interface; the machine encodes the vote as a phase-flip operation, controlled by the voter's identity register, on an entangled candidate state. Tallying is performed by interference with a reference branch followed by a measurement of the candidate register, which reproduces the vote distribution without iterative classical counting. Because every tallying run consumes the quantum state, the machines store the cast choices classically and replay the voting stage for each run. The protocol uses only basic quantum gates (Hadamard and controlled-Z). We provide analytical examples (4 voters with 2 candidates and 8 voters with 3 candidates) and numerical experiments that simulate ideal conditions, depolarizing, memory, readout, and gate noise, faulty or mistaken ballots, larger instances with confidence intervals, and sampling convergence. The simulations reproduce the theoretical tally probabilities in the ideal case and show how the tally is distorted by noise and by faulty ballots; no error correction or mitigation is applied. Voter anonymity is formalized as the indistinguishability of tallying transcripts under vote permutations, and an identity-dephasing step renders the identity register exactly maximally mixed under the stated trust assumptions. The numbers of protocol runs needed for exact tallying and for winner identification are analyzed explicitly.

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2510.15243

Related papers

Self-tallying quantum anonymous voting

Qingle Wang, Chao‐Hua Yu, Fei Gao +2 more

Anonymous voting is a voting method of hiding the link between a vote and a voter, the context of which ranges from governmental elections to decision making in small groups like councils and companies. In this paper, we propose a quantum anonymous voting protocol assisted by two kinds of entangled quantum states. Particularly, we provide a mechanism of opening and permuting the ordered votes of all the voters in an anonymous manner; any party who is interested in the voting results can acquire a permutation copy and then obtains the voting result through a simple calculation. Unlike all previous quantum works on anonymous voting, our quantum anonymous protocol possesses the properties of privacy, self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness at the same time. In addition, we demonstrate that the entanglement of the quantum states used in our protocol makes an attack from an outside eavesdropper and inside dishonest voters impossible. We also generalize our protocol to execute the task of anonymous multiparty computation, such as anonymous broadcast and anonymous ranking.

arXiv:1605.07942•Physical Review A•Aug 24, 2016•81 citations

A self-tallying quantum anonymous voting protocol for multiple-selection elections

Guang-Bao Xu, Meng-Na Li, Yu-Guang Yang +1 more

Self-tallying quantum anonymous voting (SQAV) has drawn considerable attention since it was proposed. However, constrained by design challenges, all existing protocols only accommodate single-selection voting and cannot support multi-selection voting. In this paper, we propose a SQAV protocol with multi-selection voting functionality. In our protocol, $nm$ $n$-particle entangled states are equally divided into $n$ groups, and the $n$ particles in each entangled state are delivered to $n$ voters, one particle per voter. Each voter obtains $n$ voting vectors by sequentially measuring all his (or her) particles that belong to $n$ different group, and then encodes his or her voting information into the vector corresponding to the secret index. Due to entanglement correlation, each voter can verify whether his or her ballot is correct through computation, while any participant can obtain the vote count for each candidate through computation. Our protocol satisfies self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness.

quant-pharXiv:2609.39835•Oct 1, 2026•0 citations

Quantum anonymous voting protocol based on single-particle

Jiang-Shan Liu, Yuancheng Li, Qing-Le Wang +2 more

Abstract Anonymous voting is often one decision-making choice in many democracies. Facing the security threats from quantum computers, classical anonymous voting protocols based on computational complexity hypothesis have innovated to quantum anonymous voting protocols based on quantum mechanics. In this paper, we propose a quantum anonymous voting protocol by using high-dimension single particles. With the help of EA and T , the construction of our protocol makes each legitimate voter cast only one ballot, and all ballots open in a quite random rearrangement. Each voter can anonymously trace his/her vote by a private position index, thus our protocol achieving the precious properties of eligibility, privacy, no-reusability, verifiability and fairness. We also analyze that the protocol can successfully resist attacks from external eavesdroppers and internal participants, ensuring that our voting protocol is secure under ideal conditions. Designing mature quantum anonymous voting protocols is challenging.

Physica Scripta•Mar 26, 2021•8 citations

Are Quantum Voting Protocols Practical?

Nitin Jha, Abhishek Parakh

Quantum voting protocols aim to offer ballot secrecy and publicly verifiable tallies using physical guarantees from quantum mechanics, rather than relying solely on computational hardness. This article surveys whether such quantum voting protocols are practical. We begin by outlining core mathematical ideas such as the superposition principle, the no-cloning theorem, and quantum entanglement. We then define a common system and threat model, identifying key actors, trust assumptions, and security goals. Representative protocol families are reviewed, including entanglement-based schemes with central tallying, self-tallying designs that enable public verification, and authority-minimized approaches that certify untrusted devices through observable correlations. Finally, we evaluate implementation challenges, including loss, noise, device imperfections, scalability, and coercion resistance, and discuss realistic near-term deployment scenarios for small-scale elections.

quant-pharXiv:2601.17514•Jan 27, 2026•0 citations

Quantum anonymous voting for continuous variables

Lang Jiang, Guangqiang He, Ding Nie +2 more

A series of quantum voting protocols of continuous variables is proposed. Three methods are employed to ensure that the quantum voting obeys some desirable rules. Entanglement is used to keep voters away from the voting results. We enable voters to operate identically to represent the same vote to prevent the tallyman from gaining information about individual voters. We also propose an effective scheme to prevent voters from voting more than once. In both two-valued and multivalued ballot protocols, several specific constraints are set to meet the rules.

Physical Review A•Apr 9, 2012•70 citations

Quantum Distributed Ballot Scheme Based on Entanglement Swapping

Xiaoping Lou, Zhigang Chen

We proposed a novel quantum distributed ballot scheme using swapping quantum entanglement of Bell states. The entanglement is distributed over separated voter's sites; physical inaccessibility of any one site is sufficient to guarantee the anonymity of the votes. The ballot information is encoded by local operations performed on the particles of entangled EPR states, which ensures the security present scheme. The checking phase is designed in detail based on entanglement swapping. The security of these protocols with respect to various kinds of attack is discussed.

IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom)•Nov 1, 2011•1 citation

We introduce a quantum voting protocol that uses superposition and entanglement to enable anonymous voting with trusted voting machines, in a centralized setting with a single machine and in a distributed setting where several machines are linked to a voting center through quantum channels. A voter selects a candidate through a restricted ballot interface; the machine encodes the vote as a phase-flip operation, controlled by the voter's identity register, on an entangled candidate state. Tallying is performed by interference with a reference branch followed by a measurement of the candidate register, which reproduces the vote distribution without iterative classical counting. Because every tallying run consumes the quantum state, the machines store the cast choices classically and replay the voting stage for each run. The protocol uses only basic quantum gates (Hadamard and controlled-Z). We provide analytical examples (4 voters with 2 candidates and 8 voters with 3 candidates) and numerical experiments that simulate ideal conditions, depolarizing, memory, readout, and gate noise, faulty or mistaken ballots, larger instances with confidence intervals, and sampling convergence. The simulations reproduce the theoretical tally probabilities in the ideal case and show how the tally is distorted by noise and by faulty ballots; no error correction or mitigation is applied. Voter anonymity is formalized as the indistinguishability of tallying transcripts under vote permutations, and an identity-dephasing step renders the identity register exactly maximally mixed under the stated trust assumptions. The numbers of protocol runs needed for exact tallying and for winner identification are analyzed explicitly.

Anonymous voting is a voting method of hiding the link between a vote and a voter, the context of which ranges from governmental elections to decision making in small groups like councils and companies. In this paper, we propose a quantum anonymous voting protocol assisted by two kinds of entangled quantum states. Particularly, we provide a mechanism of opening and permuting the ordered votes of all the voters in an anonymous manner; any party who is interested in the voting results can acquire a permutation copy and then obtains the voting result through a simple calculation. Unlike all previous quantum works on anonymous voting, our quantum anonymous protocol possesses the properties of privacy, self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness at the same time. In addition, we demonstrate that the entanglement of the quantum states used in our protocol makes an attack from an outside eavesdropper and inside dishonest voters impossible. We also generalize our protocol to execute the task of anonymous multiparty computation, such as anonymous broadcast and anonymous ranking.

Self-tallying quantum anonymous voting (SQAV) has drawn considerable attention since it was proposed. However, constrained by design challenges, all existing protocols only accommodate single-selection voting and cannot support multi-selection voting. In this paper, we propose a SQAV protocol with multi-selection voting functionality. In our protocol,

nm

n

-particle entangled states are equally divided into

n

groups, and the

n

particles in each entangled state are delivered to

n

voters, one particle per voter. Each voter obtains

n

voting vectors by sequentially measuring all his (or her) particles that belong to

n

different group, and then encodes his or her voting information into the vector corresponding to the secret index. Due to entanglement correlation, each voter can verify whether his or her ballot is correct through computation, while any participant can obtain the vote count for each candidate through computation. Our protocol satisfies self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness.

Abstract Anonymous voting is often one decision-making choice in many democracies. Facing the security threats from quantum computers, classical anonymous voting protocols based on computational complexity hypothesis have innovated to quantum anonymous voting protocols based on quantum mechanics. In this paper, we propose a quantum anonymous voting protocol by using high-dimension single particles. With the help of EA and T , the construction of our protocol makes each legitimate voter cast only one ballot, and all ballots open in a quite random rearrangement. Each voter can anonymously trace his/her vote by a private position index, thus our protocol achieving the precious properties of eligibility, privacy, no-reusability, verifiability and fairness. We also analyze that the protocol can successfully resist attacks from external eavesdroppers and internal participants, ensuring that our voting protocol is secure under ideal conditions. Designing mature quantum anonymous voting protocols is challenging.

Quantum voting protocols aim to offer ballot secrecy and publicly verifiable tallies using physical guarantees from quantum mechanics, rather than relying solely on computational hardness. This article surveys whether such quantum voting protocols are practical. We begin by outlining core mathematical ideas such as the superposition principle, the no-cloning theorem, and quantum entanglement. We then define a common system and threat model, identifying key actors, trust assumptions, and security goals. Representative protocol families are reviewed, including entanglement-based schemes with central tallying, self-tallying designs that enable public verification, and authority-minimized approaches that certify untrusted devices through observable correlations. Finally, we evaluate implementation challenges, including loss, noise, device imperfections, scalability, and coercion resistance, and discuss realistic near-term deployment scenarios for small-scale elections.

A series of quantum voting protocols of continuous variables is proposed. Three methods are employed to ensure that the quantum voting obeys some desirable rules. Entanglement is used to keep voters away from the voting results. We enable voters to operate identically to represent the same vote to prevent the tallyman from gaining information about individual voters. We also propose an effective scheme to prevent voters from voting more than once. In both two-valued and multivalued ballot protocols, several specific constraints are set to meet the rules.

We proposed a novel quantum distributed ballot scheme using swapping quantum entanglement of Bell states. The entanglement is distributed over separated voter's sites; physical inaccessibility of any one site is sufficient to guarantee the anonymity of the votes. The ballot information is encoded by local operations performed on the particles of entangled EPR states, which ensures the security present scheme. The checking phase is designed in detail based on entanglement swapping. The security of these protocols with respect to various kinds of attack is discussed.