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arXiv:2601.17514

Are Quantum Voting Protocols Practical?

Nitin Jha, Abhishek Parakh

quant-phcs.CRSubmitted Jan 24, 2026• Announced Jan 27, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

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.

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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.
Electronic voting is a very useful but challenging internet-based protocol that despite many theoretical approaches and various implementations with different degrees of success, remains a contentious topic due to issues in reliability and security. Here we present a quantum protocol that exploits an untrusted source of multipartite entanglement to carry out an election without relying on election authorities, simultaneous broadcasting or computational assumptions, and whose result is publicly verifiable. The level of security depends directly on the fidelity of the shared multipartite entangled quantum state, and the protocol can be readily implemented for a few voters with state-of-the-art photonic technology.
There is no quantum election protocol that can fulfil the eight requirements of an electronic election protocol, i.e., completeness, robustness, privacy, legality, unreusability, fairness, verifiability, and receipt-freeness. To address this issue, we employ the general construction of quantum digital signature and quantum public key encryption, in conjunction with classic public key encryption, to develop and instantiate a general construction of quantum election protocol. The proposed protocol exhibits the following advantages: (i) no pre-shared key between any two participants is required, and no trusted third party or anonymous channels are required. The protocol is suitable for large-scale elections with numerous candidates and voters and accommodates the situation in which multiple voters vote simultaneously. (ii) It is the first protocol that dismantles the contradiction between verifiability and receipt-freeness in a quantum election protocol. It satisfies all eight requirements stated earlier under the physical assumptions that there exists a one-way untappable channel from the administrator to the voter and that there is no collusion between any of the three parties in the protocol. Compared with current election protocols with verifiability and receipt-freeness, this protocol relies upon fewer physical assumptions. (iii) This construction is flexible and can be instantiated into an election scheme having post-quantum security by applying cryptographic algorithms conveying post-quantum security. Moreover, utilizing quantum digital signature and public key encryption yields a good result: the transmitted ballots are in quantum states, so owing to the no-cloning theorem, ballot privacy is less likely to be compromised, even if private keys of the signature and public key encryption are leaked after the election. However, in existing election protocols employing classic digital signatures and public key encryption, ballot privacy can be easily violated if attackers obtain private keys. Thus, our construction enhances privacy.
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.
We describe quantum protocols for voting and surveying. A key feature of our schemes is the use of entangled states to ensure that the votes are anonymous and to allow the votes to be tallied. The entanglement is distributed over separated sites; the physical inaccessibility of any one site is sufficient to guarantee the anonymity of the votes. The security of these protocols with respect to various kinds of attack is discussed. We also discuss classical schemes and show that our quantum voting protocol represents a NNN-fold reduction in computational complexity, where NNN is the number of voters.
Electronic voting is a very useful but challenging internet-based protocol that despite many theoretical approaches and various implementations with different degrees of success, remains a contentious topic due to issues in reliability and security. Here we present a quantum protocol that exploits an untrusted source of multipartite entanglement to carry out an election without relying on election authorities, simultaneous broadcasting, or computational assumptions, and whose result is publicly verifiable. The level of security depends directly on the fidelity of the shared multipartite entangled quantum state, and the protocol can be readily implemented for a few voters with state-of-the-art photonic technology.
Quantum information protocols offer significant advantages in properties such as security, anonymity, and privacy for communication and computing tasks. An application where guaranteeing the highest possible security and privacy is critical for democratic societies is electronic voting. As computational power continues to evolve, classical voting schemes may become increasingly vulnerable to information leakage. In this work, we present the experimental demonstration of an information-theoretically secure and efficient electronic voting protocol that, crucially, does not rely on election authorities, leveraging the unique properties of quantum states. Our experiment is based on a high-performance source of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and realizes a proof-of-principle implementation of the protocol in two scenarios: a configuration with four voters and two candidates employing privacy enhancement techniques and an election scenario supporting up to eight voters and sixteen candidates. The latter is particularly well-suited for secure board-level elections within organizations or small-scale governmental contexts.