Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Information Processing and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ipm

Trends in blockchain-based electronic voting systems

Michał Pawlak, Aneta Poniszewska-Marańda ∗
Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology, Łódź, Poland

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Electronic voting systems face many challenges, including authentication, privacy, data in-
Blockchain tegrity, transparency and verifiability. However, the developed over 10 years ago blockchain
Electronic voting technology provides an out-of-the-box solution for many of those challenges. Despite that,
E-voting
some issues are still to be solved, like remote authentication, anonymity and end-to-end
Blockchain-based E-voting
verifiability. For this reason, research on new and better blockchain-based systems is still
Blockchain-based electronic voting
E-voting trends
ongoing. The main goal of this study is to highlight the current trends in this research and its
E-voting overview eventual shortcomings. This was accomplished by conducting a Systematic Literature Review
(SLR) (Kitchenham and Charters, 2007), which resulted in selecting 35 publications. The
performed SLR allowed to define trends in utilized blockchain technologies, intended scenarios,
testing methods, main benefits and challenges faced by various systems and the most used
cryptographic solutions.

1. Introduction

Information systems are applied in numerous different fields and disciplines for a wide variety of applications within them.
Research concerning them focuses on processes of systems’ implementation and deployment, which allow them to meet their
functional and non-functional requirements. In some situations, information systems must be specialized and provide a particular
set of properties. One such application is electronic voting, which has a very distinct set of requirements. However, currently used
systems do not meet them all. That can be potentially changed by applying blockchain technology as a base for electronic voting
systems.
Blockchain is a relatively new technology that provides many benefits for information systems. The technology can be used in a
wide variety of sectors. There is ongoing research applying blockchain-based solutions in healthcare, logistics, finances, and many
others (Berdik, Otoum, Schmidt, Porter, & Jararweha, 2021). An increasingly important and popular topic regarding blockchain
and information systems is electronic voting (Xiao, Wang, Wang and Wang, 2019). The unique qualities of this technology, such as
decentralization and immutability, proved to be invaluable in assuring that the voting conducted on the system could follow the
same rules governing more traditional forms of elections and voting.
This research avenue has become significant in recent years due to an increasing number of accusations of election frauds, for
example, in the USA regarding the recent presidential election (BBC News, 2020; Kaufman, 2020). Democracy is based on voting,
and if voters do not have trust in a voting system, then democracy will not function correctly. However, all it takes is a rumour to
undermine confidence in a voting system, especially an electronic one (Duffy, 2020; Horowitz, 2020). Researching a secure, fair,
and anonymous e-voting became even more critical due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which made traditional paper-based voting a
potential health risk (World Health Organization, 2020).

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: aneta.poniszewska-maranda@p.lodz.pl (A. Poniszewska-Marańda).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102595
Received 23 June 2020; Received in revised form 14 March 2021; Accepted 16 March 2021
Available online 10 April 2021
0306-4573/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Currently employed e-voting systems proved to be not reliable, secure and safe enough to gain trust (Berdik et al., 2021). The
use of blockchain technology in e-voting holds enough potential to attract many researchers that look for the most efficient solutions
and protocols for an electronic voting system, which could be used to conduct secure, anonymous, and fair voting. It, in turn, could
increase trust in election systems and in democracy itself.
This paper serves as a survey of current studies that present trends in the use of blockchain technology within information
systems in designing electronic voting systems. The information collected in this article could serve as a map of the most common
solutions found in the protocols, the most frequent challenges the proposed solutions face, and a general guide to the most recent
research in blockchain technology regarding e-voting. Thus, the main contributions of this paper are:

1. Extensive survey regarding research on the blockchain-based electronic voting systems.

2. Identification of major trends in the field.
3. Identification of major challenges faced by the blockchain based-electronic voting systems.

The scope of this work covers research on e-voting systems using blockchain technology between 2015 and 2020. This research
is contained in papers collected from three databases: IEEE Digital Library, Springer Link, Science Direct.
This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents the background and the main concepts needed to understand the discussion
of selected studies; Section 3 presents related works. Section 4 discusses the used research methodology. Section 5 describes the
results and analysis of the stated research questions. Section 6 presents a discussion of the research results. Section 7 presents
conclusions and final remarks.

2. Background

In this section, the theoretical background of blockchain technology and electronic voting is described in detail. Each of these
topics is presented in a dedicated subsection.

2.1. Blockchain technology

Introduced in 2007 by Satoshi Nakamoto, blockchain technology is distributed in a peer-to-peer network system of ledgers, in
which contents are negotiated collectively by nodes of the network (Ølnes, Ubacht, & Janssen, 2017; Satoshi, 2008). The blockchain
system consists of two main elements (Drescher, 2017):

• blockchain data structure,

• blockchain algorithm

Blockchain data structure organizes data into an append-only chain of chronologically connected blocks. Each block is made of
two major components: (i) a block header, which stores information about a block itself, a hash reference to a previous block in
a chain and a hash root of a Merkle tree representing stored transactions; (ii) a list of transactions and their corresponding data.
Fig. 1 illustrates the blockchain data structure and how its various elements interact with each other. Rectangles represent the major
components, and rounded rectangles represent hash references.
Hash references are generated by applying a one-way cryptographic hash function to a given set of data. It creates a mapping
between the data and a unique bit string of fixed predefined size called a hash value or a hash reference. It ensures the immutability
of blockchain due to properties of cryptographic hash functions: (i) determinism, which means a hash value is always the same for
the same data; (ii) quickness of computation for any data; (iii) computational infeasibility of generating the same hash value for two
different data sets; (iv) infeasibility of computing a reverse of a hash value; (v) even small changes to input data results in a vastly
different hash value uncorrelated to the input (Horowitz, 2020). Thus, in order to modify the data of an existing block, all subsequent
blocks would have to have their hashes recalculated. In essence, this makes the data structure append-only. The most popular hash
functions used in blockchain implementations are SHA256, RIPEMD160, the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (Karame &
Audroulaki, 2016; Mingxiao, Xiaofeng, Zhe, & Qijun, 2017; Stallings, 2013).
Blockchain algorithm or blockchain network is a distributed peer-to-peer network of nodes, which objective is to store and validate
the blockchain data structure containing transactions. In general, new transactions are broadcasted by clients to the whole network to
avoid double-spending. Every node validates the received transaction to ensure their correctness and authenticity using asymmetric-
key cryptography (Karame & Audroulaki, 2016; Morabito, 2017). Valid transactions are aggregated into blocks in a process called
mining, which consists of an algorithm for the successful creation of a new block in a given network. Finally, new blocks are
broadcasted to the whole blockchain network, whose nodes must verify and accept or reject the new blocks. It is called consensus
and is achieved via a consensus algorithm and is related to mining. There is a large number of consensus algorithms, but the most
commonly used include (Mingxiao et al., 2017; Singhal, Dhameja, & Panda, 2018; Xu et al., 2017):

1. proof-of-work,
2. proof-of-stake,
3. delegated-proof-of-stake,
4. practical-byzantine-fault-tolerance.

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Fig. 1. Model of a blockchain data structure.

Source: Adapted from Pawlak, Guziur, and
Poniszewska-Maranda (2018).

In essence, the primary role of consensus algorithms is to select a node that will have a right to add a new block to its network’s
blockchain in a way that prevents attacks and malicious intent. The consensus algorithms are based on game theory and are designed
to follow their rules the most beneficial for their participants. Proof-of-work requires the nodes to compete with each other to
solve the computationally expensive problem and rewards the first one for completing the task. Proof-of-stake a winner is chosen
depending on the amount of digital currency held by the nodes. It is assumed that the node with the most currency would not have
an incentive to cheat. In delegated-proof-of-work modifies the proof-of-stake algorithm by introducing voting on a winner. Finally,
in the practical-byzantine-fault-tolerance algorithm, a winner is selected through voting in three phases.
The combination of the blockchain data-structure and the blockchain network results in systems that provide immutability of
stored data, resistance to forgery, and consistent state maintenance. Furthermore, blockchain-based systems are auditable as all
transaction are recorded and stored along with their hashes to ensure their validity. Finally, the blockchain-based systems are
censorship-proof due to their peer-to-peer nature, which makes controlling a whole system by a single entity difficult (Drescher,
2017; Singhal et al., 2018).
In contrast, there are some challenges that blockchain-based systems face. First and foremost, the larger a blockchain network
grows, the less scalable it becomes due to the increasing size of a stores chain and increased computation costs. Blockchain systems
are also vulnerable to 51% attacks, which can compromise small and large networks due to a small number of nodes and a possible
large concentration of computational power in the form of specialized hardware, respectively. Other types of attacks, such as Denial
of Service, Man in the Middle and Sybil, are also possible. Last but not least, blockchain-based systems do not provide anonymity
by default. Every node has access to a blockchain, so it is possible to track transactions and identify their owners. However, it is
essential to note that the listed challenges (and advantages) are generalized and may not apply to every implementation of the
technology (Drescher, 2017; Reyna, Martín, Chen, Soler, & Díaz, 2018).
Blockchain-based systems can be classified in multiple ways, but the most commonly used method of classification is based on
permissions given to users and nodes (Drescher, 2017; Singhal et al., 2018). These permissions consist of:

1. write rights,
2. read rights.

Write rights describe who and under what conditions can act as a node in a blockchain network and participate in storing its
blockchain data structure, negotiating its contents as part of a consensus algorithm and benefit from mining. When access to these
rights is public, and anyone can act as a node, then a blockchain network is considered to be permissionless. In contrast, if the
write rights are obtainable only to a selected number of users, a blockchain network is considered permissioned. On the other hand,
read rights describe who and under what conditions can access the data within a blockchain. These permissions divide blockchain
networks into public, which allow everyone to view their contents, and private, which conditionally select entities allowed to view
contents of their blockchains.
Blockchain technology is constantly developed and improved. There exist many different implementations with various proper-
ties. A selection of these implementations is presented in the following chapter.

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2.2. Electronic voting

The Council of Europe, in their recommendations, defined electronic voting (e-voting) as a political election or referendum in
which electronic means are used in at least casting of the vote (Council of europe, 2005, 2018). It covers a variety of hardware and
software solutions that enable voters to vote using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) like (i) dedicated electronic
voting machines; (ii) optical scanning voting machines; (iii) electronic ballot printers; (iv) centralized and decentralized software
for voting through the Internet (National Democratic Institute, 2018; Wolf, Nackerdien, & Tuccinardi, 2011).
Dedicated electronic voting machines record votes through various input devices, e.g. keyboards and touch screens. Usually, they are
accompanied by printed copies of recorded votes, called voter-verified audit paper trails (VVAPTs), for verification procedures. The
machines provide fast vote collection and counting. Furthermore, they improve ballot presentation and thus reduce the number
of spoilt ballots. However, dedicated voting machines are most often created by third parties, making end-to-end verification
impossible, which in turn reduces trusts in them.
Optical scanning voting machines are used to scan readable paper ballots and record the votes. This solution is easy to understand
by common voters and provides fast and accurate results. On the other hand, this solution is dependent on paper ballots, which
have not tampered with proof, and is expensive to deploy and maintain.
Electronic ballot printers produce readable paper recipes or voting tokens, which can be disposed of in ballot boxes and processed
by counting machines. This method is transparent and verifiable due to the physical evidence of a vote. However, this approach is
also expensive, and its only advantage over the traditional voting system is the prevention of ballot spoiling.
Centralized and decentralized software for voting through the Internet is an approach to electronic voting which allows voters to cast
their votes via devices connected to the Internet. This method can take many different forms, form dedicated devices to dedicated
websites. It is convenient for voters to approach voting that can provide fast and accurate results. Unfortunately, this type of voting
faces the most numerous security issues, e.g. hacker attacks, inadequate anonymity and privacy, and the possibility of coercion.
Electronic voting systems can be also classified in regard to two characteristics (National Democratic Institute, 2018):

• Remoteness,
• Supervision.

Remoteness defines how the votes are transmitted for aggregation and counting. A remote system transfers the votes immediately
to a counting authority through some communication channel, e.g. the Internet. On the other hand, in a non-remote system, the
votes are collected locally and transported to a counting authority after an election.
Supervision defines a location of voting. In a supervised system, the votes can be cast only under some kind of oversight by some
authority, e.g. polling station. In contrast, a non-supervised system allows voters to vote from any location, allowing them to cast
their votes.
Electronic voting is intended to improve the traditional voting process by: (i) reducing and preventing frauds through
decreasing human involvement; (ii) accelerating result processing; (iii) minimizing costs by reducing voting overhead; (iv) increasing
involvement in democratic processes by using new technologies which increase availability and usefulness. However, electronic
voting systems are not without problems on their own. The most common issues faced by such systems include: (i) inadequate
transparency and understanding of such systems by non-experts; (ii) lack of standards and norms; (iii) vulnerabilities to attacks
and manipulations by the system provides, privileged insiders and/or malicious users; (iv) increase of costs due to required ICT
infrastructure, power consumption and maintenance (Wolf et al., 2011).
Many different approaches are using different technologies and algorithms to mitigate those challenges of e-voting. In recent
years, blockchain technology gained much attention and its potential for improving e-voting solutions was noticed. Results of
research of this potential will be presented in the following sections.

3. Related works

Blockchain technology has many applications across several different fields from banks and finances, through IoT and media, to
health, energy, and logistics. Furthermore, new areas and methods of using it are constantly researched. The authors of Berdik et al.
(2021) conduct a thorough review of numerous publications on blockchain technology in information systems and present a detailed
list of applications divided by blockchain technology challenges. One of the areas potentially impacted by blockchain technology is
the Internet of Things (IoT). For example, it can be used for authorization and authentication in smart city applications (Esposito,
Ficco, & Gupta, 2021), in supporting data integrity through interaction with El-Gamal cryptosystem and bilinear pairing (Zhao,
Chen, Liu, Baker, & Zhang, 2020), or in creating scalable and secure incentive-based Long Range Information Systems (LoRa-IS) (Yu
et al., 2021).
Another research avenue, closely connected with IoT, relates to the Internet of Vehicles and Vehicle Ad hoc Networks (VANETs).
For instance, the authors of Oham, Michelina, Jurdak, Kanhere, and Jha (2021) present a decentralized framework for vehicle
networks for assessing integrity and identification of compromised vehicles. In Campanile, Iacono, Marulli, and Mastroianni (2021)
a model for private data logging system for the Internet of Vehicles compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation of the
European Union is described. Finally, the authors of Khalid et al. (2021) propose a system for managing vehicle data in a reliable,
transparent and secure way by using the InterPlanetary File System, which is an incentive mechanism based on reputation.
Blockchain technology can also be applied to code copyright systems. In Jing, Liu, and Sugumaran (2021) a verification system
using Abstract Syntax Tree is constructed on top of a blockchain peer-to-peer network. The technology can also be applied in Cloud.

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For instance, it can be used for public auditing of verifying data integrity in cloud storage without third party involvement (Li,
Wu, Jiang and Srikanthan, 2020). Finally, it is essential to note that many blockchain implementations exist, one of which is
Hyperledger Fabric, a framework for permissioned and public networks. The authors of Xua et al. (2021) conduct analysis of latency
of a permissioned setting of this framework.
One of the researched popular topics is blockchain in governance, including electronic voting. Multiple researchers have
investigated this topic. The authors of Shanmugasundaram, Kalaimathy, Johnvee, and Pavithra (2019) conducted a review of
challenges of electronic voting and some current works on blockchain-based e-voting systems. The author of Willemson (2018)
compares traditional voting with remote voting via the Internet and argues that a transition to electronic voting may be inevitable.
Another overview of the existing voting systems is provided by the authors of Poddar, Mondal, Dutta, and Dey (2018), who describe
different voting approaches along with their advantages and disadvantages coupled with technological advancements made in the
domain. Finally, a survey of e-voting systems’ requirements and utilized by them cryptographic primitives is provided by Fouard,
Duclos, and Lafourcade (2017).
As mentioned previously, studies on the utilization of blockchain technology in the field of electronic voting are ongoing.
The authors of Xiao, Wang, Wang, Wang (2019) summarize electronic voting and provide a description and comparison of
different blockchain-based e-voting systems. In Abuidris, Hassan, Hadabi, and Elfadul (2019) risks, vulnerabilities and opportunities
associated with the adoption of blockchain-based electronic voting systems are illustrated. Another important survey was conducted
by the authors of Cucurull, Rodríguez-Pérez, Finogina, and Puiggalí (2019), who provide analysis of several blockchain-based e-
voting systems and their compliance with available international norms and standards. Finally, Košt’ál, Bencel, Ries, and Kotuliak
(2019) in addition to a transparent e-voting platform, some commercial blockchain-based electronic voting solutions are presented
and described.
It is important to note that there are numerous publications concerning the integration between blockchain technology and
electronic voting. Those publications describe different approaches with different goals, which are accomplished with a variety of
means. For this reason, this systematic literature review (SLR) is intended to provide an overview of a current state of the art and
current trends in the field of blockchain-based electronic voting.

4. Research methodology

This chapter presents the research methodology used for the research presented in this paper. The following sections describe
the systematic literature review process and its review of e-voting works.

4.1. Overview of systematic literature review process

A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is a method for conducting secondary studies, which utilizes a defined methodology to
identify, analyse and interpret available research relevant to a particular field, question or phenomenon (Kitchenham & Charters,
2007). The process consists of three phases:

1. planning the review,

2. conducting the review,
3. reporting the review.

A goal of the planning the review phase is to establish research questions and to define a review procedure. In essence, the scope
of research is presented in this phase. In the conducting the review phase, the main task is to generate a search strategy, use it to
obtain as many relevant primary studies as possible, and evaluate them. This phase results in a set of relevant papers gathered from
all the available research papers, which can be evaluated and answer the research questions. Finally, the reporting the review phase
consists of writing up the obtained results in a selected presentation format. This stage produces the final research report in the
desired form, in this case, a research paper. Fig. 2 presents an overview of the Systematic Literature Review phases with artefacts
obtained after each phase.

4.2. Research questions

This paper aims to provide insight into the current solutions of blockchain-based electronic voting and identify the most common
trends. To achieve this paper aims to answer research questions presented in Table 1.

4.3. Inclusion and exclusion criteria

To filter the results of a database search, a set of inclusion (IC) and exclusion criteria (EC) were defined. A complete list is
presented in Tables 2 and 3.

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Fig. 2. Systematic literature review process diagram.

Table 1
Research questions used in SLR.
Question ID Question Description and motivation
RQ1 What are blockchain This question aims to showcase the most used
solutions/implementations used in implementations of blockchain, which are used as a base of
e-voting? electronic voting systems. It allows comparing different
blockchains and their properties.
RQ2 For what intended scenarios are the This question seeks to describe scenarios for which the
solutions applied? solutions are being developed, which may allow comparing
solutions intended for the same scenarios.
RQ3 Do the solutions follow any law, Laws, regulations and standards help define requirements
regulations or standards? and specific needs of a given system.
RQ4 What are the verification methods of This questions aims to identify how a given solution was
the solutions? tested against e-voting system requirements.
RQ5 Was the solution used in an actual Analysis of solutions used in a real situation would allow
situation? learning from their experience and improving new solutions.
RQ6 What are the main benefits of the Each solution is designed to provide some advantages, and
solution? this question serves to identify them.
RQ7 What are the challenges faced by the Every solution has some disadvantages, and this question
solution? serves to identify them.
RQ8 What are distinct cryptographic E-voting solutions utilize variety of cryptographic primitives
solutions used in the studies? and approaches. This question aims to identify them, so they
may be integrated into other solutions.

Table 2
Inclusion criteria of research methodology in systematic literature review process.
ID Inclusion criteria
IC1 Full studies with at least five pages.
IC2 Studies published in the last five years (01.01.2015–01.05.2020).
IC3 Studies that answer a research question or present a practical solution.
IC4 Studies that cover blockchain-based electronic voting.
IC5 Only primary studies.

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Fig. 3. Number of papers obtained from each queried database.

Table 3
Exclusion criteria of research methodology in systematic literature review process.
ID Inclusion criteria
EC1 Studies not in the English language.
EC2 Studies published in the last five years (01.01.2015–01.05.2020).
EC3 Studies irrelevant to the research because they do not answer any research question.
EC4 Duplicated studies.
EC5 Grey literature.
EC6 Papers older than five years.

Table 4
Selection process.
ID Stage IEEE Science direct Springer link Total
1 Initial search 95 91 251 437
2 After duplicates removal 95 91 251 437
3 Selection based on title and abstract reading 43 7 51 101
4 Selection based on a full reading 27 4 22 53

4.4. Search strategy

The search strategy consisted of a series of searches conducted on three databases: IEEE Digital Library, Springer Link, Science
Direct. The review protocol used the PICOC criteria to frame the research questions:

1. Population: Reviewed publications reporting blockchain-based electronic voting systems for large to small-sized elections.
2. Intervention: Collect information on e-voting solutions developed on top of blockchain platforms.
3. Comparison: The obtained studies will not be compared.
4. Outcomes: Blockchain-based electronic voting systems, their intended scenarios, used technologies, applicable laws, stan-
dards and regulations, evidence of them being used in real situations, their advantages and disadvantages, utilized by them
cryptographic solutions.
5. Context: E-Voting, Blockchain.

With that in mind, after multiple iterative tests, the following search string was finally defined for querying the chosen databases:
(‘‘electronic voting ’’ OR ‘‘e-voting ’’) AND (‘‘blockchain’’ OR ‘‘Bitcoin’’ OR ‘‘Ethereum’’ OR ‘‘Hyperledger’’ OR ‘‘Multichain’’).

4.5. Selection procedure

Querying the databases with the search string resulted in a total of 437 papers, 95 from IEEE Digital Library, 91 from Science
Direct and 251 from Springer Link, respectively (Fig. 3).
Those values directly translate to percentage values of 22%, 21% and 57% for IEEE Digital Library, Science Direct and Springer
Link, respectively (Fig. 4).
Collected papers were filtered in four stages: (i) initial search, where the main body of texts was collected; (ii) duplicate removal,
in which duplicates should be removed but none were found; (iii) selection based on a title and abstract reading, where the inclusion
and exclusion criteria were applied to titles and abstracts; (iv) selection based on a full reading, where the inclusion and exclusion
criteria were applied to whole papers. The process illustrated in Table 4 resulted in a total of 437 papers in the first stage, 437
papers in the second stage, 101 papers in the third stage and 53 papers in the fourth stage.

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Fig. 4. Percentage of papers obtained from each queried database.

Table 5
Data extraction form.
ID Field Description
1 ID Unique study identifier.
2 Authors List of the authors.
3 Year Year of the publication.
4 Title Title of the publication.
5 Source IEEE Digital Library, Science Direct, Springer Link.
6 Type Journal, Conference Paper.
7 Research Question 1 What are blockchain solutions/implementations used in e-voting?
8 Research Question 2 For what intended scenarios are the solutions applied?
9 Research Question 3 Do the solutions follow any law, regulations or standards?
10 Research Question 4 What are verification methods of the solutions?
11 Research Question 5 Was the solution used in real situation?
12 Research Question 6 What are the main benefits of the solution?
13 Research Question 7 What are the challenges faced by the solution?
14 Research Question 8 What are distinct cryptographic solutions used in the studies?

Table 6
Quality criteria table.
ID Quality criteria
QC1 Does the study contribute to the field of e-voting?
QC2 Was the approach proposed in the study used in practice?
QC3 Is this article useful for practitioners?
QC4 Are the limitations of the proposed approach presented and discussed?
QC5 Are the results of the study discussed?
QC6 Is the presented approach clearly described?
QC7 Is the context of the study adequately described?
QC8 Are the related works presented in the study?
QC9 Are goal and scope of the study clearly stated?

4.6. Data extraction and synthesis

A data extraction form for data synthesis was created after conducting the selection procedure, and data from the 53 selected
articles were extracted and synthesized. The form and its contents are presented in Table 5.

4.7. Quality assessment

All studies presented in this paper were assessed using a scoring technique against nine Quality Criteria (QC) presented in Table 6.
The following scale was used for each criterion: 1 for yes, 0.5 for partially and 0 for no. The total sum of each quality criterion
assessment is a total quality assessment of a study. The scores for each of the selected articles are presented in the later sections of
this paper.

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Fig. 5. Number of papers about blockchain selected for analysis organized according to year.

Fig. 6. Distribution of selected studies according to the type of publication.

4.8. Threats to validity

Several threats to the validity of this research exists. Firstly, not all relevant sources might have been identified. To mitigate
this, the search was conducted on multiple databases with the broadest search query possible. It should ensure that majority of the
relevant research was obtained. Furthermore, the search process was conducted iteratively to reduces bias to retain internal validity.
External validity was ensured by utilizing only well-known research databases and excluding grey literature by deliberate choice
of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Furthermore, as was already mentioned, the most inclusive search query possible was utilized
to obtain the highest coverage of meaningful studies from database search engines.

5. Result presentation

In this section results of the systematic literature review of the selected 52 papers are presented. The selected papers are listed in
Table 7. Each research question is discussed separately in a dedicated subsection. However, the first subsection presents the results
of the quality assessment conducted as a part of the research.

5.1. Overview

For the purpose of this investigation, only studies from 2015 to 2020 were accepted to observe the latest research and ideas
in implementing e-voting based on blockchain technology. In Table 8 the selected studies were organized according to year of
publication. Fig. 5 shows the increase of articles related to the use of blockchain in e-voting.
Table 8 presents the selected studies organized according to the type of publication. Fig. 6 shows how many of the selected
studies belong to the given category. From 52 studies in total, only 11 (21%) were journal articles, while 41 (79%) were conference
papers.

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Table 7
Papers about blockchain selected for analysis.
ID Article title Ref.
1 Chaintegrity: blockchain-enabled large-scale e-voting system with robustness and universal Zhang, Wang and Xiong (2019)
verifiability
2 voteChain: Community Based Scalable Internet Voting Framework Almeida, Ricci, and Camarinha-Matos (2019)
3 Implementation of an E-Voting Scheme Using Hyperledger Fabric Permissioned Blockchain Kirillov et al. (2019)
4 Investigating performance constraints for blockchain based secure e-voting system Khan, Arshad, and Khan (2019)
5 Efficient, Coercion-free and Universally Verifiable Blockchain-based Voting Dimitriou (2020)
6 End-to-End Voting with Non-Permissioned and Permissioned Ledgers Bistarelli, Mercanti, Santancini, and Santini (2019)
7 E-Voting With Blockchain: An E-Voting Protocol with Decentralization and Voter Privacy Hardwick, Gioulis, Akram, and Markantonakis
(2018)
8 Fast Adaptive Blockchain’s Consensus Algorithm via Wlan Mesh Network Jiang, Liu, Zhao, Zhou, and Wang (2018)
9 How to Vote Privately Using Bitcoin Zhao and Chan (2016)
10 A Secure Decentralized Trustless E-Voting System Based on Smart Contract Lyu et al. (2019)
11 Towards Blockchain-Based E-Voting Systems Braghin, Cimato, Cominesi, Damiani, and Mauri
(2019)
12 Secure Online Voting System Using Biometric and Blockchain Pawade, Sakhapara, Badgujar, Adepu, and Andrade
(2019)
13 Votereum: An Ethereum-Based E-Voting System Thuy, Cao-Minh, Dang-Le-Bao, and Nguyen (2019)
14 LaT-Voting: Traceable Anonymous E-Voting on Blockchain Li and Lai (2019)
15 An improved FOO voting scheme using blockchain Zhou, Liu, Jiang, and Wang (2019)
16 A Simple Voting Protocol on Quantum Blockchain Sun, Wang, Kulicki, and Sopek (2019)
17 Blockchain Centred Homomorphic Encryption: A Secure Solution for E-Balloting Priya, Bhama, Swarnalaxmi, Safa, and Elakkiya
(2019)
18 TrustedEVoting (TeV) a Secure, Anonymous and Verifiable Blockchain-Based e-Voting Verwer, Dionysiou, and Gjermundrød (2019)
Framework
19 Towards a Privacy-Preserving Voting System Through Blockchain Technologies Bosri, Uzzal, Omar, Hasan, and Bhuiyan (2019)
20 PHANTOM Protocol as the New Crypto-Democracy Srivastava, Dwivedi, and Singh (2018)
21 A Proposal of Blockchain-Based Electronic Voting System Adiputra, Hjort, and Sato (2018)
22 SecEVS: Secure Electronic Voting System Using Blockchain Technology Singh and Chatterjee (2018)
23 Transparent E-Voting dApp Based on Waves Blockchain and RIDE Language Faour (2019)
24 DABSTERS: A Privacy Preserving e-Voting Protocol for Permissioned Blockchain Chaieb, Koscina, Yousfi, Lafourcade, and Robbana
(2019a)
25 Improving End-to-End Verifiable Voting Systems with Blockchain Technologies Perez and Ceesay (2018)
26 Design of Blockchain-Based Electronic Election System Using Hyperledger: Case of Indonesia Seftyanto, Amiruddin, and Hakim (2019)
27 Privacy-protected Electronic Voting System Based on Blockchain and Trusted Execution Zhang, Li, Fang, Chen and Dong (2019)
Environment
28 A Privacy-Preserving Voting Protocol on Blockchain Zhang et al. (2018)
29 Trusted and Secured E-Voting Election System Based on Block Chain Technology Leema, Gulzar, and Padmavathy (2020)
30 Temper proof data distribution for universal verifiability and accuracy in electoral process Shaheen, Yousaf, and Jalil (2017)
using blockchain
31 Designing Process-Centric Blockchain-Based Architectures A Case Study in e-voting as a Service Bellini, Ceravolo, Bellini, and Damiani (2020)
32 Large-Scale Electronic Voting Based on Conflux Consensus Mechanism Xiao, Wang and Wang (2019)
33 Verify-Your-Vote: A Verifiable Blockchain-Based Online Voting Protocol Chaieb, Koscina, Yousfi, Lafourcade, and Robbana
(2019b)
34 SHARVOT: Secret SHARe-Based VOTing on the Blockchain Bartolucci, Bernat, and Joseph (2018)
35 A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy McCorry, Shahandashti, and Hao (2017)
36 A Blockchain-based Self-tallying Voting Protocol in Decentralized IoT Li et al. (2020)
37 Anonymous and Coercion-Resistant Distributed Electronic Voting Zaghloul, Li, and Ren (2020)
38 Block Chain Technology based Electoral Franchise Priya and Rupa (2020)
39 Electronic Voting based on Virtual ID of Aadhar using Blockchain Technology Roopak and Sumathi (2020)
40 Blockchain-Based Self-Tallying Voting System with Software Updates in Decentralized IoT Han, Li, Yu, Choo, and Guizani (2020)
41 A Smart Contract System for Decentralized Borda Count Voting Panja, Bag, Hao, and Roy (2020)
42 Efficient Privacy-Preserving Electronic Voting Scheme Based on Blockchain Xu and Cao (2020)
43 Digital Voting A Blockchain-based E-Voting System using Biohash and Smart Contracts Alvi, Uddin, and Islam (2020)
44 TrustVote On Elections We Trust with Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts Soud, Helgason, Hjálmtýsson, and Hamdaqa (2020)
45 Fault-Tolerant Architecture Design for Blockchain-Based Electronics Voting System Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020)
46 Decentralized E-voting system based on Smart Contract by using Blockchain Technology Al-madani, Gaikwad, Mahale, and Ahmed (2020)
47 Provotum A Blockchain-based and End-to-end Verifiable Remote Electronic Voting System Killer et al. (2020)
48 A Blockchain-based Traceable Self-tallying E-voting Protocol in AI Era Li, Li, Yu, Wang and Chen (2020)
49 E-Voting System using Hyperledger Sawtooth Vivek, Yashank, Prashanth, Yashas, and Namratha
(2020)
50 Blockchain voting Publicly verifiable online voting protocol without trusted tallying authorities Yang, Yi, Nepal, Kelarev, and Han (2020)
51 AttriChain Decentralized traceable anonymous identities in privacy-preserving permissioned Shao et al. (2020)
blockchain
52 An enhanced security mechanism through blockchain for E-pollingcounting process using IoT Krishnamurthy, Rathee, and Jaglan (2020)
devices

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Table 8
Classification of the selected studies according to the type of publication.
Classification Studies Total
Conference papers Adiputra et al. (2018), Al-madani et al. (2020), Almeida et al. (2019), Alvi et al. (2020), Bartolucci 41
et al. (2018), Bellini et al. (2020), Bosri et al. (2019), Braghin et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019a,
2019b), Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Faour (2019), Han et al. (2020), Hardwick et al. (2018),
Jiang et al. (2018), Killer et al. (2020), Kirillov et al. (2019), Leema et al. (2020), Li and Lai (2019),
Lyu et al. (2019), McCorry et al. (2017), Pawade et al. (2019), Perez and Ceesay (2018), Priya et al.
(2019), Priya and Rupa (2020), Roopak and Sumathi (2020), Seftyanto et al. (2019), Shaheen et al.
(2017), Singh and Chatterjee (2018), Soud et al. (2020), Srivastava et al. (2018), Sun et al. (2019),
Thuy et al. (2019), Verwer et al. (2019), Vivek et al. (2020), Xiao, Wang, Wang (2019), Xu and Cao
(2020), Zaghloul et al. (2020), Zhang, Li et al. (2019), Zhang et al. (2018) and Zhao and Chan (2016)
Journal articles Bistarelli et al. (2019), Dimitriou (2020), Khan et al. (2019), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Li, Li et al. 11
(2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), Panja et al. (2020), Shao et al. (2020), Yang et al. (2020), Zhang,
Wang et al. (2019) and Zhou et al. (2019)

Table 9
Quality assessment scores of the selected studies in each of analysed paper, part 1.
Study QC1 QC2 QC3 QC4 QC5 QC6 QC7 QC8 QC9 Total score %
Zhang, Wang et al. (2019) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 100%
Almeida et al. (2019) 0.5 0 0.5 1 1 1 0.5 0 1 5.5 61%
Kirillov et al. (2019) 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 7.5 83%
Khan et al. (2019) 0.5 0 0 0 1 1 0.5 0.5 1 4.5 50%
Dimitriou (2020) 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 7.5 83%
Bistarelli et al. (2019) 0.5 0 0 0 1 1 0.5 0 1 4 44%
Hardwick et al. (2018) 0.5 1 0.5 0 1 1 0.5 0.5 1 6 67%
Jiang et al. (2018) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9 100%
Zhao and Chan (2016) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9 100%
Lyu et al. (2019) 0.5 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 5.5 61%
Braghin et al. (2019) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9 100%
Pawade et al. (2019) 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 7.5 83%
Thuy et al. (2019) 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 6.5 72%
Li and Lai (2019) 0.5 1 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Zhou et al. (2019) 0.5 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 89%
Sun et al. (2019) 0.5 0 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Priya et al. (2019) 0.5 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 5.5 61%
Verwer et al. (2019) 0.5 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 5.5 61%
Bosri et al. (2019) 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 6.5 72%
Srivastava et al. (2018) 0.5 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 5.5 61%
Adiputra et al. (2018) 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 1 1 0.5 0.5 1 5.5 61%
Singh and Chatterjee (2018) 0.5 1 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Faour (2019) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9 100%
Chaieb et al. (2019a) 0.5 1 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 7.5 83%
Perez and Ceesay (2018) 0.5 1 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Seftyanto et al. (2019) 0.5 1 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 7.5 83%
Zhang, Li et al. (2019) 0.5 1 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Zhang et al. (2018) 0.5 1 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Leema et al. (2020) 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 7 78%
Shaheen et al. (2017) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9 100%
Bellini et al. (2020) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9 100%
Xiao, Wang, Wang (2019) 0.5 1 0.5 0 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Chaieb et al. (2019b) 0.5 0 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 7 78%
Bartolucci et al. (2018) 0.5 0 0.5 1 1 1 0.5 0.5 1 6 67%
McCorry et al. (2017) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 9 100%
Li, Susilo et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 8 89%
Zaghloul et al. (2020) 1 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 1 1 1 1 6.5 72%

5.2. Quality assessment results

The criteria presented in Table 6 were the basis for the evaluation of the selected studies. The results of the quality assessment
are presented and described in Tables 9 and 10. The average quality of the studies was 80%. The following 8 articles (Bellini et al.,
2020; Braghin et al., 2019; Faour, 2019; Jiang et al., 2018; McCorry et al., 2017; Shaheen et al., 2017; Zhang, Wang et al., 2019;
Zhao & Chan, 2016) achieved 100% on quality evaluation. There were studies that seemed to fail qualitative assessment. However,
they were included in the review for the purpose of their qualitative assets and innovative ideas in the research of blockchain
technology.

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Table 10
Quality assessment scores of the selected studies in each of analysed paper, part 2.
Study QC1 QC2 QC3 QC4 QC5 QC6 QC7 QC8 QC9 Total score %
Priya and Rupa (2020) 1 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 6 67%
Roopak and Sumathi (2020) 1 0 0.5 0 0.5 1 0.5 1 1 5.5 61%
Han et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 0 0.5 1 1 0.5 1 6.5 72%
Panja et al. (2020) 1 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 89%
Xu and Cao (2020) 1 0.5 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 7.5 83%
Alvi et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 0 0.5 1 1 0.5 1 6.5 72%
Soud et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8.5 94%
Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020) 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 0.5 1 8 89%
Al-madani et al. (2020) 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0.5 1 6.5 72%
Killer et al. (2020) 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 89%
Li, Li et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 7.5 83%
Vivek et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 8 89%
Yang et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 8 89%
Shao et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8.5 94%
Krishnamurthy et al. (2020) 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 8 89%
Average 80%

Fig. 7. Number of studies utilizing specific blockchain implementation.

5.3. RQ1: What are blockchain solutions/implementations used in e-voting?

As was already mentioned, there exist numerous blockchain implementations. For this, reason it was deemed important to identify
which of them are currently researched in the context of electronic voting. Fig. 7 illustrates what blockchain implementations were
identified and how many times they were used in a body of the selected literature. Table 11 maps specific articles to specific
blockchain implementations.
As can be seen from both Fig. 7 and Table 11 the most of the reviewed studies utilize a ‘‘Generic Blockchain’’. This means that
the authors did not specify which (if any) existing blockchain implementation they are using, which leaves a gap in knowledge
about given implementation and its security properties. Of course, it can be interpreted that the theses studies are universal but it is
rarely specified. There are four notable exceptions. The first one is Dimitriou (2020) in which the author argues using a permissioned
blockchain implementation like Hyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, the author argues that implementations based on cryptocurrencies
are unsuitable for e-voting tasks. The second is Verwer et al. (2019) where the authors directly states that the proposed solution
is intended for a permissioned blockchain system. The authors also suggest using Hyperledger Fabric for the implementation. In the
third one (Sun et al., 2019), the authors propose using a custom ‘‘Quantum Blockchain’’ developed as part of other research. Finally,
the authors of Bistarelli et al. (2019) created a system that can be implemented on both Bitcoin and Multichain platforms.
The second most used blockchain implementation is Ethereum with 19 articles utilizing this platform. Ethereum is a global,
open source platform for decentralized application (Ethereum Foundation, 2014). It provides permissionless and public blockchain
architecture supporting smart contracts, which are self-executing programmable contracts between two parties. This functionality
is the main reason for choosing this blockchain implementation because all studies included in this group utilize them. However,
it is important to note that Ethereum uses proof-of-work and each operation on its blockchain costs gas. This means that every
system based on this implementation must consider potential costs that may arise from systems’ usage. This may make such systems
unsuitable for large scale elections due to potential expenses or additional overhead from managing virtual currency.

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Table 11
Studies utilizing specific blockchain implementations.
Blockchain implementation Utilized by
Ethereum Al-madani et al. (2020), Almeida et al. (2019), Bosri et al. (2019), Braghin et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019b),
Hardwick et al. (2018), Killer et al. (2020), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Li, Li et al. (2020), Lyu et al. (2019),
McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Pawade et al. (2019), Perez and Ceesay (2018), Priya and Rupa (2020),
Shao et al. (2020), Thuy et al. (2019), Xu and Cao (2020) and Zhang, Li et al. (2019)
Bitcoin Bartolucci et al. (2018) and Zhao and Chan (2016)
Hyperledger Fabric Bellini et al. (2020), Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Jiang et al. (2018), Kirillov et al. (2019), Li and Lai (2019),
Seftyanto et al. (2019) and Soud et al. (2020)
Hyperledger Sawtooth Vivek et al. (2020)
Multichain Khan et al. (2019)
Generic Blockchain Adiputra et al. (2018), Alvi et al. (2020), Bistarelli et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019a), Dimitriou (2020), Han et al.
(2020), Leema et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), Priya et al. (2019), Roopak and Sumathi (2020), Shaheen et al.
(2017), Singh and Chatterjee (2018), Sun et al. (2019), Verwer et al. (2019), Yang et al. (2020), Zaghloul et al.
(2020), Zhang, Wang et al. (2019), Zhang et al. (2018) and Zhou et al. (2019)
Phantom Bosri et al. (2019)
Conflux Xiao, Wang, Wang (2019)
Waves Faour (2019)

The second most used blockchain platform is Hyperledger Fabric with 7 articles utilizing it. Hyperledger is a project covering
variety of tools and frameworks for blockchain-based development. Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source modular framework for
building blockchain-based applications providing permissioned blockchain infrastructure with roles and smart contract functionality
(called Chaincode) (Hyperledger, 2019). Given its modular architecture and permission system Hyperledger seems to be a platform
well suited for electronic voting. Its main advantage is a complex system of privileges and access management, which in a context of
e-voting would allow to reduce a risk of undesirable and unauthorized access. Furthermore, as a permissioned blockchain platform,
Hyperledger Fabric does not impose additional costs. Hyperledger Fabric also offers a pluggable consensus algorithm, which allows
versatility (defaults to Raft algorithm).
The fourth most used blockchain implementation is Bitcoin with 2 articles utilizing it. Bitcoin is a global and open source
blockchain-based cryptocurrency introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 (Satoshi, 2008). It is first and the most well-known
public and permissionless blockchain using a proof-of-work consensus algorithm. Similarly to Ethereum, Bitcoin network may be not
suitable for electronic voting because of costly the proof-of-work algorithm and cost associated with transactions.
Each of the five remaining blockchain platforms was used only once. Multichain is a platform for deploying private and
permissioned blockchain network directly derived from Bitcoin with a focus given to a permission system, which also manages
mining (Coin Sciences Ltd, 2019). Multichain has also in-build smart contract functionality. This is another platform which seems
to be suitable for electronic voting without additional overhead in a form of proof-of-work and transaction costs. The Multichain
platform has provided complex and granular permission management, which, similarly to Hyperledger Fabric, allows to mitigate
risks.
PHANTOM is a blockchain protocol that is intended to handle any throughput, which can be handled by a given network. It uses
Directed Acyclic Graph of blocks for better management of large blocks and a delegated proof-of-stake as a consensus algorithm.
Like most of the blockchain platforms PHANTOM supports smart contracts (Phantom.org, 2020).
Conflux is a blockchain implementation based on Bitcoin. Its main advantages are combination of a proof-of-work algorithm and
a tree graph data structure to provide faster and more efficient transactions (Conflux, 2019).
Waves is an open source blockchain cryptocurrency platform utilizing a so called Leased Proof-of-Stake (LPoS) which is a modified
proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. This algorithm increases probability of generating block by a participant in proportion to a
share of cryptocurrency belonging to or being leased to this participant. The Waves platform also uses a dedicated functional
expression-based programming language called RIDE for smart contracts and scripting (Waves Association e. V., 2020).
Hyperledger Sawtooth is a blockchain platform from the Hyperledger family. It allows deployment of both all types of blockchain
networks. Its main features include parallel transaction validation, which reduces execution time and pressure on the network,
and modularity, which allows high degree of customization. In addition, it supports vide variety of consensus algorithms which
include: Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, Proof of Elapsed Time and Raft. The makes Hyperledger Sawtooth an ideal platform
for development of all types of electronic voting systems (Intel Corporation, 2020).

5.4. RQ2: What the intended scenarios are for are the solutions applied?

Two types of scenarios were identified in the SLR: (i) scenarios from a point of view of scale; (ii) scenarios from a point of
view of e-voting properties. The first group is presented in Fig. 8 and Table 12. As can be seen the selected articles can be divided
into four groups. The first group is General Voting group consisting of 28 publications, which provide solutions and approaches to
any scale of electronic voting. This group also included papers in which a type of election was not specified. The second group is
National Voting and it is made of 15 publications describing e-voting for large scale national elections. The next group consists of 7
publications providing solutions for Small scale voting like boardroom (Faour, 2019; Jiang et al., 2018; McCorry et al., 2017; Panja

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Fig. 8. Number of e-voting scenarios from a point of view of a scale.

Table 12
E-voting scenarios from a point of view of a scale.
Scenario classification Studies
General voting Adiputra et al. (2018), Bartolucci et al. (2018), Bellini et al. (2020), Bistarelli et al. (2019), Bosri et al. (2019),
Braghin et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b), Dimitriou (2020), Hardwick et al. (2018), Killer et al. (2020),
Kirillov et al. (2019), Leema et al. (2020), Li and Lai (2019), Lyu et al. (2019), Perez and Ceesay (2018), Priya et al.
(2019), Priya and Rupa (2020), Seftyanto et al. (2019), Shaheen et al. (2017), Srivastava et al. (2018), Sun et al.
(2019), Verwer et al. (2019), Vivek et al. (2020), Zhang, Li et al. (2019), Zhang, Wang et al. (2019), Zhang et al.
(2018) and Zhou et al. (2019)
National voting Al-madani et al. (2020), Almeida et al. (2019), Alvi et al. (2020), Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Khan et al.
(2019), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Li, Li et al. (2020), Roopak and Sumathi (2020), Shao et al. (2020), Soud et al.
(2020), Thuy et al. (2019), Xiao, Wang, Wang (2019), Xu and Cao (2020), Yang et al. (2020) and Zaghloul et al.
(2020)
Small scale voting Faour (2019), Jiang et al. (2018), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Pawade et al. (2019), Singh and
Chatterjee (2018) and Zhao and Chan (2016)
IoT Han et al. (2020), Košt’ál et al. (2019) and Li, Susilo et al. (2020)

Table 13
E-voting scenarios from a point of view of e-voting characteristics.
Scenario classification Studies
Supervised and remote Khan et al. (2019), Seftyanto et al. (2019), Shaheen et al. (2017), Srivastava et al. (2018), Thuy et al. (2019) and
voting Vivek et al. (2020)
Semi-supervised and Adiputra et al. (2018), Al-madani et al. (2020), Almeida et al. (2019), Alvi et al. (2020), Bistarelli et al. (2019), Bosri
remote voting et al. (2019), Braghin et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b), Dimitriou (2020), Hardwick et al. (2018), Killer
et al. (2020), Li and Lai (2019), Li, Li et al. (2020), Lyu et al. (2019), McCorry et al. (2017), Pawade et al. (2019),
Perez and Ceesay (2018), Priya et al. (2019), Priya and Rupa (2020), Roopak and Sumathi (2020), Verwer et al.
(2019), Yang et al. (2020), Zaghloul et al. (2020), Zhang, Li et al. (2019) and Zhou et al. (2019)
Unsupervised and Bartolucci et al. (2018), Bellini et al. (2020), Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Faour (2019), Han et al. (2020),
remote voting Jiang et al. (2018), Kirillov et al. (2019), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Leema et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020),
Panja et al. (2020), Shao et al. (2020), Singh and Chatterjee (2018), Soud et al. (2020), Sun et al. (2019), Xiao, Wang,
Wang (2019), Xu and Cao (2020), Zhang, Wang et al. (2019), Zhang et al. (2018) and Zhao and Chan (2016)

et al., 2020; Pawade et al., 2019; Zhao & Chan, 2016) or university voting (Singh & Chatterjee, 2018). The final group consist of IoT
voting, which is designed for voting between various Internet of Things devices. This type of voting can be considered large-scale
due to general intention of connecting numerous devices.
The second group is presented in Fig. 9 and Table 13. For this classification three distinct scenarios were identified based on
the e-voting characteristics discussed in Section 2.2. The first and least numerous scenario (6 papers) is supervised and remote voting,
which consists of papers researching improving traditional voting from supervised locations by replacing traditional ballots by
blockchain-based internet voting. The second group consists of 26 works researching e-voting scenarios, which for the purpose of
this paper was named semi-supervised and remote voting. In this type of a scenario, voters can cast their votes from any location,
but first they must register and authenticate to a central authority to obtain voting accounts and/or voting tokens before they are
allowed to vote. The last group consists of 20 papers researching unsupervised and remote voting scenarios, in which voters must
manage authentication and authorization without additional activities from a central authority.

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Fig. 9. Number of e-voting scenarios from a point of view of e-voting characteristics.

Fig. 10. Number of research papers following any laws, regulations or standards.

5.5. RQ3: Do the solutions follow any law, regulations or standards?

As can be seen in Fig. 10 only in three research articles a law, regulation or standard is mentioned. The authors of Perez and
Ceesay (2018) explicitly mentions applying a specific standard developed by U.S Election Assistance Commission called Voluntary
Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) (US Election Assistance Commission, 2015). The standard contains a set of specifications and
requirements, which include basic functionality, accessibility and security capabilities, for testing voting systems.
The remaining 51 publications did not mention any standards, laws or regulations that are applied to that described by them.
However, there are some mentions of requirements for electronic voting systems based on common knowledge or other publications.
In general, those requirements include:

1. Ballot privacy — requires that only voters can know how they voted.
2. Eligibility — requires only that legitimate, authenticated and authorized people are allowed to vote.
3. Fairness — requires that an election outcome cannot be manipulated in any way.
4. Correctness — requires that each vote is correctly included in a final tally and the voting cannot be tampered with.
5. Receipt-freeness — requires that there are no receipts that can link voters to their votes.
6. Integrity — requires that once cast, ballots should not be modifiable.
7. Coercion–Resistance — requires that it should be impossible to prove a coercer how a vote was cast.
8. Verifiability — requires that an election process is transparent and can be audited.

It is important to note that the listed requirements are just one of possible variations, which depends on a source used in a given
research paper.

5.6. RQ4: What are verification methods of the solutions?

The goal of this question was to identify methods of testing utilized for verification of e-voting systems. Table 14 presents a list
of identified test methods with their publications.

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Table 14
Verification methods used in the selected publications.
Test method Research article Total
Analysis of evaluation Adiputra et al. (2018), Al-madani et al. (2020), Alvi et al. (2020), Bellini et al. (2020), Bosri et al. 31
criteria (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b), Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Dimitriou (2020), Faour
(2019), Han et al. (2020), Killer et al. (2020), Kirillov et al. (2019), Li and Lai (2019), Lyu et al.
(2019), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Perez and Ceesay (2018), Priya et al. (2019),
Priya and Rupa (2020), Roopak and Sumathi (2020), Seftyanto et al. (2019), Shao et al. (2020), Soud
et al. (2020), Sun et al. (2019), Thuy et al. (2019), Xu and Cao (2020), Yang et al. (2020), Zhang,
Wang et al. (2019), Zhang et al. (2018) and Zhou et al. (2019)

Security analysis Dimitriou (2020), Khan et al. (2019), Lyu et al. (2019), Singh and Chatterjee (2018) and Zhang, 14
(resistance against Wang et al. (2019); Chaieb et al. (2019a), Perez and Ceesay (2018) and Shaheen et al. (2017);
specific attacks) Chaieb et al. (2019b), Li, Li et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), McCorry et al. (2017), Shao et al.
(2020) and Zaghloul et al. (2020)

Performance tests Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Han et al. (2020), Hardwick et al. (2018), Jiang et al. (2018), 22
(preparation, ballot Khan et al. (2019), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Li, Li et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), Lyu et al.
casting, tallying, total) (2019), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Pawade et al. (2019), Priya et al. (2019), Shao
et al. (2020), Soud et al. (2020), Vivek et al. (2020), Xu and Cao (2020), Yang et al. (2020),
Zaghloul et al. (2020), Zhang, Wang et al. (2019), Zhao and Chan (2016) and Zhou et al. (2019)

Scalability testing Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Khan et al. (2019), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. 6
(2020), Thuy et al. (2019) and Zaghloul et al. (2020)
Cost evaluation Bistarelli et al. (2019), Braghin et al. (2019), Hardwick et al. (2018), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), Lyu 10
et al. (2019), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Shao et al. (2020), Thuy et al. (2019) and
Zhang, Li et al. (2019)
Security measurement Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b) 2
tool

Analysis of evaluation criteria was identified as a test method in which the authors formally and informally analyse their proposed
systems against the set of specified requirements. These requirements may vary but are compliant with the requirements presented
in Section 5.5. This is a verification method present in the most publications.
Security analysis was identified as a test method in which the authors formally and informally analyse and describe their systems’
security properties to specific attacks like: reply attack, DDoS attack, Sybil attack and man-in-the-middle attack.
Performance tests are a method test method in which the authors conduct a practical verification of performance of their solution.
This includes load testing and measuring time of various election stages from setup and voter registration to ballot casting and
tallying.
Scalability testing is a method of testing in which the authors conduct a formal and informal analysis of their solution ability to
handle large number of users and transactions that will be present during an election.
Cost evaluation is a method of testing in which authors evaluate costs associated with their solution usage. This is relevant when
used blockchain platform is a public one an uses some form of cryptocurrency, like Ethereum, in which every operation has an
associated cost measured in gas.
Security measurement tool is a method of testing in which a dedicated security analysis tool is deployed to obtain information
about security parameters of software. The authors of Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b) used ProVerif tool for verification.
It is worth noting that only Chaieb et al. (2019b), Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), Lyu et al. (2019),
Panja et al. (2020) and Zhang, Wang et al. (2019) conducted three types of tests and only McCorry et al. (2017) and Shao et al.
(2020) conducted four different types of tests and verifications.

5.7. RQ5: Is there evidence of using the solution in real situation?

This question aims to answer if any of the described in the 52 selected publications solutions was used in a real election or
referendum and if (and how) its results affected the final product. However, none of the selected publications explicitly mentions
being used in a real practical situation beyond being implemented and tested in a laboratory setting.

5.8. RQ6: What are the main benefits of the solution?

This question seeks to identify the advantages of the systems presented in the selected studies. Table 15 identifies the main
benefits of using blockchain in e-voting.
The benefits such as ballot privacy, eligibility, fairness, correctness, receipt-freeness, integrity, coercion–resistance and verifiability were
mentioned in Section 5.5 as the general requirement of the electronic voting systems. The studies listed in Table 11 were the ones
that stated, discussed and implemented the given benefit into their proposals. There is a clear tendency for the studies that ensure
ballot privacy, eligibility and verifiability.

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Table 15
Explicitly mentioned benefits of blockchain-based solutions.
Benefit Research article Total
Ballot privacy Alvi et al. (2020), Bosri et al. (2019), Braghin et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019b), Chaisawat and 21
Vorakulpipat (2020), Faour (2019), Han et al. (2020), Killer et al. (2020), Leema et al. (2020), Li and
Lai (2019), Li, Li et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020),
Shao et al. (2020), Sun et al. (2019), Verwer et al. (2019), Vivek et al. (2020), Xiao, Wang, Wang
(2019), Xu and Cao (2020) and Zaghloul et al. (2020)
Eligibility Bartolucci et al. (2018), Braghin et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b), Dimitriou (2020), 16
Hardwick et al. (2018), Kirillov et al. (2019), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Priya and Rupa (2020),
Roopak and Sumathi (2020), Sun et al. (2019), Thuy et al. (2019), Vivek et al. (2020), Xu and Cao
(2020), Yang et al. (2020) and Zhou et al. (2019)
Fairness Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b), Han et al. (2020), Hardwick et al. (2018), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), Lyu 10
et al. (2019), Sun et al. (2019), Thuy et al. (2019), Zhang, Wang et al. (2019) and Zhou et al. (2019)
Correctness Al-madani et al. (2020), Braghin et al. (2019), Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Soud et al. (2020), Vivek 6
et al. (2020) and Yang et al. (2020)
Receipt-freeness Chaieb et al. (2019b), Xiao, Wang, Wang (2019), Yang et al. (2020), Zhang, Li et al. (2019) and 5
Zhou et al. (2019)
Integrity Al-madani et al. (2020), Alvi et al. (2020), Bosri et al. (2019), Braghin et al. (2019), Chaieb et al. 8
(2019a), Priya and Rupa (2020), Soud et al. (2020) and Verwer et al. (2019)
Coercion–Resistance Adiputra et al. (2018), Braghin et al. (2019), Dimitriou (2020) and Zhou et al. (2019) 4
Verifiability Adiputra et al. (2018), Chaieb et al. (2019b), Dimitriou (2020), Faour (2019), Hardwick et al. (2018), 26
Killer et al. (2020), Kirillov et al. (2019), Li and Lai (2019), Li, Li et al. (2020), Lyu et al. (2019),
McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Perez and Ceesay (2018), Seftyanto et al. (2019), Shaheen
et al. (2017), Shao et al. (2020), Soud et al. (2020), Sun et al. (2019), Thuy et al. (2019), Verwer
et al. (2019), Vivek et al. (2020), Xu and Cao (2020), Yang et al. (2020), Zhang, Wang et al. (2019),
Zhao and Chan (2016) and Zhou et al. (2019)
Double voting avoided Almeida et al. (2019), Dimitriou (2020), Kirillov et al. (2019), Lyu et al. (2019), Soud et al. (2020), 7
Zaghloul et al. (2020) and Zhang, Wang et al. (2019)
Man-in-the-middle attack Lyu et al. (2019) 1
resistant
DDoS attack resistant Lyu et al. (2019) and Zaghloul et al. (2020) 2
Biometrics Pawade et al. (2019) and Roopak and Sumathi (2020) 2
Software updates Han et al. (2020) 1
Scalability Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Khan et al. (2019), Vivek et al. (2020) and Zhang, Wang et al. 4
(2019)

There also benefits which go beyond general electronic voting requirements. In the selected articles there were a couple of studies
that discussed the issue of double voting. A voter could not cast a second vote, as the systems prevented the same person from voting
more than once, as stated in Almeida et al. (2019), Dimitriou (2020), Kirillov et al. (2019), Lyu et al. (2019), Soud et al. (2020),
Zaghloul et al. (2020) and Zhang, Wang et al. (2019).
In Lyu et al. (2019) there was a specific mention of the system being resistant of two types of attacks that is of man-in-the-middle
attack and DDoS attack.
There are also two studies Pawade et al. (2019) and Roopak and Sumathi (2020) that used biometrics for the unique approach of
ensuring that a given person cast only one vote. The presented approaches use IRIS recognition and fingerprints for authentication
respectively.
Han et al. (2020) specifically solves a problem of authorized and eligible software updates for IoT devices using blockchain,
digital signatures and smart contracts to facilitate and secure the update process.
Only research papers Chaisawat and Vorakulpipat (2020), Khan et al. (2019), Vivek et al. (2020) and Zhang, Wang et al. (2019)
tackled the problem of scalability of the blockchain-based electronic voting systems. Zhang, Wang et al. (2019) implements a custom
blockchain based around a consortium blockchain concept (private and permissioned) to obtain scalability. The authors of Khan
et al. (2019) conducted research on scalability of Multichain and a public and permissioned blockchain implementation. In Chaisawat
and Vorakulpipat (2020) a system, which employs container technology to replicate server instances as needed, is described. The
authors of Vivek et al. (2020) leverage Hyperledger Sawtooth to obtain high scalability.

5.9. RQ7: What are the challenges faced by the solution?

As it was stated in Zhang, Wang et al. (2019), blockchain is not a solution to every challenge faced by e-voting. The systems
proposed in the selected works face many problems and while some are resolved there are many that still require more research to
solve. Table 16 presents the most common problems stated in the selected studies.
Coercion refers to the issue of voter being forced to prove how they cast their vote. In Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b), Killer et al.
(2020), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Soud et al. (2020), Srivastava et al. (2018) and Thuy et al. (2019) it is stated that

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Table 16
Explicitly mentioned challenges of researched solutions.
Challenge Research article Total
Coercion Chaieb et al. (2019a, 2019b), Killer et al. (2020), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Soud 8
et al. (2020), Srivastava et al. (2018) and Thuy et al. (2019)
Receipt-freeness Kirillov et al. (2019), Thuy et al. (2019) and Zhang, Wang et al. (2019) 3
Security attacks Alvi et al. (2020), Thuy et al. (2019), Zhang et al. (2018) and Zhang, Li et al. (2019) 4
(DDoS attack, cartel
attack, 51% attacks)
Transaction fees Al-madani et al. (2020), Almeida et al. (2019), Bartolucci et al. (2018), Braghin et al. (2019), Li, 7
Susilo et al. (2020), Lyu et al. (2019), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Shao et al. (2020),
Thuy et al. (2019) and Zhang, Li et al. (2019)
Associating wallets with Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Li, Li et al. (2020), Perez and Ceesay (2018), Soud et al. (2020) and 5
voters Yang et al. (2020)
Election key leakage Adiputra et al. (2018) 1
Adding fake votes Hardwick et al. (2018) 1
Multiple submission of Bartolucci et al. (2018) 1
votes

in the presented systems, the votes could be pressured into proving for whom they voted. However, it is important to note that this
challenge may be unsolvable for unsupervised and remote electronic voting systems, especially from just software point of view.
Receipt-freeness is a quality of the system that ensures that a voter cannot be connected to their vote. The problem emerges often
as a result of nature of the blockchain, which returns transaction ID (Thuy et al., 2019), using public keys (Kirillov et al., 2019) or
by sacrificing the quality to ensure other results (Zhang, Wang et al., 2019).
Security attacks are one of the most crucial problems faced by e-voting. The systems must be able to defend against different
types of attacks to ensure that the voting is not disrupted and there was no tampering in the results. The following studies specify
the attacks to which the presented systems are vulnerable and those are: cartel attack (Zhang et al., 2018), side attack (Zhang, Li
et al., 2019) and DDoS attack (Thuy et al., 2019).
Transaction fees are interesting issue because they are often not noted as a challenge or limitation. They are simply accepted as
a necessary requirement to perform a voting on the blockchain platform such as Ethereum (Al-madani et al., 2020; Almeida et al.,
2019; Braghin et al., 2019; Li, Susilo et al., 2020; Lyu et al., 2019; McCorry et al., 2017; Panja et al., 2020; Shao et al., 2020; Thuy
et al., 2019; Zhang, Li et al., 2019), which calculates a gas cost for each operation, or Bitcoin (Bartolucci et al., 2018) which require
a transaction fee.
Associating wallets with voters was mentioned in Krishnamurthy et al. (2020), Li, Li et al. (2020), Perez and Ceesay (2018), Soud
et al. (2020) and Yang et al. (2020) which is a potential violation of voters privacy and may lead to coercion or lack of trust in
electronic voting systems.
Election key leakage is an issue presented in Adiputra et al. (2018) which would allow people to see the result of the election and
lead to possible disruption of an ongoing election.
Adding fake votes is another problem that is an issue of the protocol presented in Hardwick et al. (2018) where the centralization
point could break the trust and add additional votes in such a way as to not be detected.
Multiple submission of votes is an issue faced by Bartolucci et al. (2018) in which a voting participant could submit multiple or
false votes as to disrupt voting.
Those are the challenges mentioned by the selected studies. They do not state whether any other limitations are present and
some of the studies simply did not discussed any issues in the proposed systems.

5.10. RQ8: What are distinct cryptographic solutions used in the studies?

The aim of this question was to identify the most used cryptographic solutions in the current research on electronic voting. The
results are presented in Table 17, which maps cryptographic solutions to specific research papers.
Digital, blind and ring signatures are cryptographic solutions based on public-key cryptography used for authentication and
authorization. Blind and ring signatures are used for anonymous authentication which allows protecting voters’ privacy in case
of electronic voting systems (Zhang, Wang et al., 2019).
Homomorphic encryption is a cryptographic solution which allows generating a ciphertext in such a wat that it is possible
to conduct calculations, which will provide the same result as corresponding calculations on a plaintext. The two most used
homomorphic encryption schemes in the selected publications were ElGamal and Paillier cryptosystems. Homomorphic encryption
is used for encrypting votes to ensure privacy and fairness (Zhang, Wang et al., 2019).
Secret sharing schemes are cryptographic solutions which allow distributing secret information among several participants in such
a way that the secret can be recovered only after all separate parts have been obtained. Secret sharing schemes are mostly used
ensure fairness but also for ballot casting (Zhang, Wang et al., 2019).

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Table 17
Explicitly mentioned cryptographic solutions used in researched papers.
Cryptographic solution Research article Total
Digital, blind and ring Alvi et al. (2020), Chaieb et al. (2019a), Han et al. (2020), Hardwick et al. (2018), Kirillov et al. 12
signatures (2019), Lyu et al. (2019), Roopak and Sumathi (2020), Shao et al. (2020), Zhang, Li et al. (2019),
Zhang, Wang et al. (2019), Zhang et al. (2018) and Zhou et al. (2019)
Homomorphic Killer et al. (2020), Li, Li et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), Panja et al. (2020), Priya et al. 10
encryption (2019), Yang et al. (2020), Zaghloul et al. (2020), Zhang, Li et al. (2019), Zhang et al. (2018) and
Zhang, Wang et al. (2019)
Secret sharing schemes Bartolucci et al. (2018), Kirillov et al. (2019), Lyu et al. (2019) and Zhang, Wang et al. (2019) 4
Identity Mixer (Idemix) Kirillov et al. (2019) 1
Zero-Knowledge-Proof Bosri et al. (2019), Dimitriou (2020), Jiang et al. (2018), Killer et al. (2020), Li and Lai (2019), Li, Li 11
et al. (2020), Li, Susilo et al. (2020), McCorry et al. (2017), Panja et al. (2020), Shao et al. (2020)
and Zhao and Chan (2016)
Commitment schemes Bartolucci et al. (2018), Dimitriou (2020), Hardwick et al. (2018), Jiang et al. (2018), Li, Susilo et al. 8
(2020), Sun et al. (2019), Zhao and Chan (2016) and Zhou et al. (2019)
Anonymous Kerberos Bistarelli et al. (2019) 1
Chameleon hash Braghin et al. (2019) 1
Prefix-Based Li and Lai (2019) 1
Linkable-and-Traceable
Anonymous
Authentication
Identity Based Chaieb et al. (2019b) 1
Encryption
Distributed encryption Killer et al. (2020), Shao et al. (2020), Xu and Cao (2020) and Yang et al. (2020) 4
and decryption
Time-lock puzzle Li, Li et al. (2020) 1

Identity Mixer (Idemix) is a developed by IBM cryptographic solution for providing a verifier with just enough information about
a user to perform an action. Furthermore, it is possible to make it unlinkable, so subsequent requests are not associated. In general,
Idemix main goal is to ensure anonymity and privacy (Kirillov et al., 2019).
Zero-knowledge-proof is a cryptographic solution which allows one party to prove a specific statement is true to another party
without sharing any other information. The most used zero-knowledge-proof in the selected publications was Zero-Knowledge Succinct
Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK), which allows to share information without interaction between parties (Zhao &
Chan, 2016).
Commitment schemes are cryptographic solutions which allow one party to hide a value from another party until it is time to
display the value and the other party can be sure that the now displayed value is the original one.
Anonymous Kerberos is a cryptographic solution which provides a mechanism for principals to authenticate to a remote service
without disclosing their identity. The protocol is used to provide anonymous authentication method (Bistarelli et al., 2019).
Chameleon hash is a cryptographic solution which uses collision resistant hash functions that allow to verify if information has
been recorded correctly by utilizing in-built trapdoor (Braghin et al., 2019).
Prefix-Based Linkable-and-Traceable Anonymous Authentication is a cryptographic solution developed by the authors of Li and Lai
(2019) which is used for private authentication that allows to link two authenticated messages which provides public traceability
in case of misbehaviour, e.g. users who authenticated twice.
Identity Based Encryption is a cryptographic primitive that is a type of public-key encryption, which uses some unique information
about a user for encryption (Chaieb et al., 2019b).
Distributed encryption and decryption are based on an idea that encryption and decryption of data is conducted by a group of
entities, each of which has only partial knowledge of the data. This prevents a single entity form accessing and manipulating data
under consideration (Killer et al., 2020).
Time-lock puzzles are mechanisms which allow to encrypt message and ensure that the message stays encrypted for a specified
amount of time (Li, Li et al., 2020).
As can be seen the most used cryptographic solutions are various types of digital signature (12 articles) for ensuring authenti-
cation and authorization, zero-knowledge proofs (11 articles) for ensuring anonymity and privacy, and homomorphic encryption of
various types (10 articles) for operation on encrypted votes, e.g. counting.

6. Analysis and discussion

As can be seen from several obtained works, blockchain technology is considered by researchers to impact electronic voting
systems positively. Its main advantages are the immutability of data and its distributed nature. The first one ensures that votes
contained within were not tampered with, and the second that no single entity has complete control of the system. However,
blockchain on its own is not a solution to all e-voting problems. The technology does not produce enough privacy, does not ensure
eligibility of voters and while it does provide verifiability, it does not impose anonymity on it.

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

Thus, as can be seen from the studies, there is ongoing work on methods preventing violations of e-voting requirements. Some
of the issues can be potentially solved by different blockchain implementations. More and more research is conducted on private
and permissioned blockchain platforms such as Hyperledger Fabric. Such implementations allow granular access and privilege
management, have better performance and scalability and do not require additional costs in the form of cryptocurrency (Khan
et al., 2019). In contrast, public and permissionless implementation require additional considerations and work to impose privacy,
eligibility and correctness. Many researchers seem to be working on their implementations or do not state the blockchain used.
It makes such research not entirely reliable because of the unknown properties of such implementations. However, the presented
approaches may be used on verified blockchain platforms. In the end, it is believed that private permissioned blockchain platforms
are the future of research in e-voting (Khan et al., 2019; Killer et al., 2020; Soud et al., 2020).
As was already shown, blockchain technology is not enough. In order to create an electronic voting system that satisfies various
requirements, additional solutions are needed. Researchers employ different cryptographic solutions, but the most widely used can be
grouped into three categories: (i) digital, blind and ring signatures; (ii) homomorphic encryption; (iii) zero-knowledge proofs. Their
primary use is to ensure eligibility while providing privacy and anonymity and verifiability without disclosing sensitive information.
It is difficult to assess if these and other cryptographic solutions really work, and that is due to insufficient testing, which will be
discussed in the other parts of this section.
It is no secret that the main appeal of e-voting is the ability to vote without leaving home. However, this is the leading cause of
challenges connected with eligibility and coercion. Most research is focused on semi-supervised and unsupervised voting. In both
cases, voters are required to authenticate and authorize themselves to obtain a token or account that allows them to vote at some
point during an election. In most papers, this procedure is not clearly defined, and it is not sure whether voters must go to some
office or obtain the necessary authorization remotely. Furthermore, a form of such tokens or accounts is often skipped, and that is
something that may affect user experience and availability of the e-voting system.
What is clear from the conducted research is that verification methods used within the e-voting field are lacking. First and
foremost, there is no widely agreed standards, laws or regulations, which could be used as a reference point for assessing electronic
voting systems. Secondly, presented in the research papers, systems undergo only limited testing, and none of them was used in an
actual situation. Furthermore, given that many of them are intended for large-scale voting, only four considered scalability issues.
Performance and scalability are significant issues, especially considering overhead in the form of costly cryptographic operations.
It is vital to shift attention to more extensive and thorough testing of e-voting systems in more practical circumstances.

7. Conclusions

Information systems are implemented and deployed for a diverse set of tasks, objectives and applications. They utilize wide
variety of technologies, architectures and approaches to meet their requirements. It is common for them to constantly search for
innovative solutions to leverage their benefits to improve efficiency. Recent events, namely the world-wide pandemic and increasing
number of election frauds, created a need for an efficient, secure and reliable information system for conducting elections even during
lockdowns. However, creating and deploying an electronic voting system is not an easy task.
Electronic voting systems face many challenges, including issues with authentication, privacy, data integrity, transparency and
verifiability. However, the developed over 10 years ago blockchain technology provides an out-of-the-box solution for many of those
challenges. Despite that, some issues are still to be solved, like remote authentication, anonymity and end-to-end verifiability. For
this reason, research on new and better blockchain-based systems is still ongoing.
The main goal of this study is to highlight the current trends in this research and its eventual shortcomings. The main conclusions
of this research are as follows.
The leading blockchain platform used for development is Ethereum which was cited by 19 out of 52 research papers. It is despite
it being a public and permissionless blockchain network. The second platform, with 7 citations, is Hyperledger Fabric which is the
exact opposite of Ethereum being a private and permissioned blockchain. However, it is important to note that 19 papers did not
specify what (if any) existing blockchain was used.
Most research papers focus on a general concept of voting (28 papers) that can be applied to any scale. Furthermore, the majority
of research focuses on semi-supervised and remote voting (26 papers), in which votes can be cast from any location. However, some
kind of central authority still exists, which is responsible for an election setup, authentication, and authorization of voters.
There are no widely accepted laws, standards, or regulations present that are followed or even included in the selected research
papers. Only Perez and Ceesay (2018) presented a specific regulation which the presented solution is intended to comply with.
There is a need to integrate laws and regulations into e-voting solutions.
Like all other software, the electronic voting system can be tested by various methods, from acceptance testing to performance
and security testing. However, there is no standard protocol for verification and validation of such systems, nor any reference data.
At least none is mentioned in the selected works. Furthermore, there is no evidence of any of these systems being used in practice,
making complete evaluation impossible.
Most of the selected papers provide verifiable solutions, which is one of the electronic voting system’s main issues. Other
most tackled issues are ensuring ballot privacy and eligibility of voters. On the other hand, many systems suffer from a lack of
coercion–resistance and receipt-freeness, fees associated with operating on a public blockchain and vulnerability to some attacks.
Three cryptographic solutions cited most often are various types of digital signatures for providing authentication and authoriza-
tion, commitment schemes for delaying the reveal of votes until the end of a voting period and zero-knowledge-proofs for anonymous
authentication and voting.

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M. Pawlak and A. Poniszewska-Marańda Information Processing and Management 58 (2021) 102595

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