2020 the third International Conference on Vocational Education and Electrical Engineering (ICVEE)

E-Voting on Blockchain using Solidity Language

Yamuna Rosasooria Abd Kadir Mahamad Sharifah Saon
Independent Researcher Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Faculty of Electrical and Electronic
Bandar Putra Bertam, Kepala Batas, Engineering Engineering
Pulau Pinang, Malaysia Universiti Tun Hussien Onn Malaysia Universiti Tun Hussien Onn Malaysia
ce160062@siswa.uthm.edu.my Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia
0000-0002-3985-6549 0000-0003-2706-3258

Mohd Anuar Mat Isa Shingo Yamaguchi Mohd Anuaruddin Ahmadon

iExplore Graduate School of Science and Graduate School of Science and
Taman Klang Utama, Technology for Innovation Technology for Innovation
Klang Selangor, Malaysia. Yamaguchi University Yamaguchi University
anuarls@hotmail.com Japan Japan
shingo@yamaguchi-u.ac.jp anuar@yamaguchi-u.ac.jp

Abstract—Electronically voting process without paper and
the ballot box, namely electronic voting (e-voting), required
some improvement, especially in terms of security elements.
This is against the anonymize properties of the e-voting system.
Therefore, a blockchain e-voting system was proposed which
have a secure and transparency features to deploy during the
Student Representative Council (SRC) election in Universiti
Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). Blockchain technology
ensured all aspects such as transparency, security, and
auditability were achieved without sacrificing the privacy of
voters. In this study, e-voting using a blockchain system was
developed to detect the fraud that occurs during the voting
session using Solidity language. A total of 3 cases were analyzed
and a questionnaire was done to evaluate the proposed system.
Analysis of respondents gave positive perception with a mean
value of 4.5, 4.6, and 4.9, for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Case respectively.
To sum up, the proposed system can shorter the time for the
voting process and diminishes the expense because of no need to
print out the ballot.
Keywords—e-voting, blockchain, solidity language,
I. INTRODUCTION
From the beginning of the voting system, the casting a
ballot has been founded on the conventional pen and paper
method, as a basic framework to confine extortion and allows
the procedure to be detectable and evident. The election
procedure was improved by the electronic voting process
without the existence of paper and ballot boxes. A successful
election process shows a group of registered voters use the
computer network at the voting center to cast their ballots.
This method has been seen as imperfect, in terms of security
[1]. Moreover, the e-voting system can stop accepting the
ballots when the administrator had deactivated the election
session. This paper is proposed to design an e-voting system
using blockchain technology by developing online-based.
Besides, the proposed system is developed for a fraud
detection system using a smart contract of Solidity language.
This project has been developed on the Remix application,
which focuses on the development of an e-voting system for
public voting in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia
(UTHM), especially for the Student Representative Council
(SRC) election.
The existing UTHM e-voting system requires some
improvement, especially the e-voting systems security
elements. This is against the security properties of the voting
system, namely anonymization. Hence, blockchain is needed
to provide anonymize security features to the e-voting system.
Moreover, a blockchain can detect fraud while making the
voting process traceable and verifiable [2]. This happens
because blockchain helps in recording the transactions, which
cannot be deleted or altered. The network participants have to
agree to the validation of the transaction through
consensus [3].
The blockchain e-voting system provides a real voting
process through the electronic device [2]. The vote is sent to
the nodes and transaction to the blockchain is based on the
smart contracts [4]. The smart contracts are the regulations to
be followed to verify and added the vote into the system [4].
The blockchain is specifically accessible by authorized
members/participants and not visible to the public [5]. To
ensure smoothness of distributed network traffic, each node is
designed to have a specific node server.
Satoshi Nakamoto was presumed as the person that
introduced Bitcoin in 2008 [6], starting from that year,
Blockchain technology became familiar and much other
application using this technology was proposed by many
researchers.
Blockchain is a block that contains a list of records
connected in chain form. This chain is processed using a Peer-
to-Peer (P2P) network [7]. This chain has to comply with the
mechanisms, called Proof-of-Work (PoW) that are used in
Bitcoin and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) that are applied in PeerCoin
[8].
The blockchain technology is a decentralized public ledger
based on smart contract agreement [9]. The permission in the
blockchain is based on Proof-of-Authority (PoA) algorithm.
In PoA based network, any transaction must be validated by
the validators [10]. This process is to ensure the security which
any transaction has to validate and certify randomly, with their
identity and reputation at stake [10].
The application of blockchain can be used for investors
crowdfunding on the blockchain to create a secure system for
investors and entrepreneurs, eliminating the middle man on
investments and ensuring entrepreneurs get their projects
funded [11]. The general thought of the blind auction contract
is that everyone can send offers during an offering period. The
benefit of a blind auction is that there is no time pressure
towards the finish of the offering time frame [12]. With the
fast development of technology and social service awareness,
pre-payment schemes are now widely accepted in the
provision of utility services such as electricity, water, and gas
[13]. Authentication is the people who already registered are
allowed to cast a vote.

978-1-7281-7434-1/20/$31.00©2020 IEEE

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 TABLE I. COMPARISON BETWEEN EXISTING SYSTEM AND
PROPOSED SYSTEM.
System Method Advantage Disadvantage
Paper-Based Paper 1. Easy to 1 People with
Voting cards or vote for weak or no
Systems [22] sheets senior vision
citizens. might need
large print,
2. High cost
3. Spoil vote
Remote SMS 1. Maximize 1. Can be
Voting the tamper
System [23] convenien 2. Current and
ce to vote near-term
technologie
s are
insufficient
to report
Fig. 1. System architecture on e-voting system using blockchain these risks
Direct- Touchscre 1. Lower 1. No printed
Recording en cost proof of the
Electronic interface 2. Simpler vote.
(Dre) Voting or simple to use 2. The results
Systems [24] buttons than are not
The system does not support the registration process [14]. computer- accumulate
Registration usually requires verification of certain counted d or
information and documents to comply with current laws, paper counted in
systems. the polling
which could not be done online in a secure manner. Therefore, places but
the system should be able to verify the voter’s identities at the
against a previously verified database, and then let the voters tabulation
vote only once [14]. Hence, anonymity is the e-voting system center.
that should not allow any links between voter’s identities and Blind Interface 1. The 1. The result
Signature signature can tamper.
ballots. The voter has to remain anonymous during and after
Technology is used to 2. High cost
the election [15]. Next, accuracy is where votes must be Voting authentica 3. Voters
accurate and every vote should be counted, and can’t be System [25] te the should
changed, duplicated, or removed. Finally, verifiability is to voter available at
make sure all the votes are counted correctly by the system while the voting
[16]. keeping center to
the complete
There are few types of the existing system are analyzed in secrecy of the voting
this section. Estonia is the first country in the world that the process
content of
implements nationwide internet voting [17]. The system has a ballot
been developed since 2001 with the final trial held at the end 2. The ballot
of 2004. The first system is used in 2005 by local government using an
elections [18]. After 3 years, the system is used for anonymo
parliamentary elections. The registered voters may cast their us
channel.
ballot via the internet. Estonia is the main nation in the country Proposed Interface 1. Cost and 1. Voters
that depends on the Internet hugely casting a ballot for System time should
national races [19]. The framework is right now utilized for savings available at
Estonia's national parliamentary decisions, city races and is increased the voting
wanted to be utilized for coming European Parliamentary 2. Mitigated center to
races. In late surveys, between 20 percent and 25 percent of risk of complete
fraud and the voting
voters cast their ballots on the web [19]. Be that as it may, the disputes. process
country's Internet voting system can't ensure reasonable 3. Preserved
elections because of important security weaknesses and poor the
operating procedures, security, and Internet voting researchers anonymit
have found [17]. Besides, The Infrastructure University Kuala y
Lumpur (IUKL) Students Representative Council (SRC)
proposed to adopt for its election using an Android-based
mobile voting application. The several features of this current manual voting system [21]. Table 1 shows the
application; which are the voting process conducted online, comparison of existing system and proposed system.
the results are trackable in the real-time, centralized platform
to campaign, and an interactive platform between the II. RESEARCH METHOD
candidates and the voters [20]. On the other hand, Universiti This section discussed in details about the method and
Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTEM) Students Representative activities done in blockchain e-voting system development.
Council proposed voting system was designed and created Software development requires a methodology which it
using cryptographic mechanisms to protect and enhance the fulfills the need of the system to produce a good result.

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Fig. 2. Web application
Solidity language is used to design the system as a user-
friendly interface because it is more appropriate and
preferable in this project. This section also describes the set of
techniques that have been chosen as a guideline in developing
the system and about the methodology conducted for the
proposed project. It is important to decide a suitable
methodology during the election development process, as it
helped the developer to deploy the smart contract systematic
and eligible. The design and implementation of the system are
decentralized which a part of the software that interconnects
with the blockchain and manages the state of all networks.
Lastly, the dependencies that need to install to build this
project are using Ganache which is given the 10 fake hash
account while Node.js that used to run the Javascript outside
of the browser. MetaMask is the main dependency used to
transfer the Ethereum.
A. System Architecture
System architecture shows the flow from the backend to
the frontend. Each block has its task to make the system
function properly. Figure 1 shows the system architecture on
the e-voting system using blockchain.
B. Web Application
The user interacts with a web application by using a web
browser to connect to a central server over a network. All the
code of this web application lives on the central server and all
the data lives in a central database. While the transaction of
the application must communicate with the central server on
the web. Figure 2 shows the process of the web application.
C. Questionnaire
The evaluation of the proposed system was conducted
based on a questionnaire sent to collect the perception of the
respondent on the e-voting system using blockchain
technology. This chapter includes two sections which are
demographic analysis and perception of the respondent that
used e-voting on the blockchain.
III. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
This section focuses on the result and analysis obtained
from the project development. Moreover, this section
explained the basic concepts as an initial overview of the
system operation. In this section, the result of the backend and
frontend was showed step by step in the following section.
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Each step showed the outcome of the interface while building
the system. Furthermore, there was 3 category of the case
study that done to evaluate the proposed system and to analyze
the perception of respondents that used the blockchain e-
voting system. The case study was focus on (i) the e-voting
system using blockchain, (ii) the comparison of the e-voting
system using blockchain versus non-blockchain, and (iii)
fraud attempt. Finally, a questionnaire is used to collect the
perception of the respondent on the e-voting system using
blockchain technology.
A. Backend
The backend represents the entire business logic which is
represented by one or several smart contracts interacting with
the underlying blockchain. For this purpose, the project
directory was created for a decentralized application in the
command line.
B. Frontend
The frontend of a decentralized application represented the
user interface on Chrome. Two networks were used in the
MetaMask to get the interface. Firstly, the localhost which has
the candidate picture, candidate names, and the address
account that casting the voting. Secondly, the Rinkeby
network able to see the account address after casting the vote.
Therefore, Web3 is a Javascript library that was allowed the
localhost to connect with the blockchain, and initialize
contracts that were used to fetch the deployed instance of the
smart contract. The code was assigned a function that allows
the authorized client to use the frontend. Render function will
lay out all the content on the page with data from the smart
contract which is the list of the candidates that created inside
the smart contract. All the candidates have been looped
through each other in the mapping and rendering it to the table.
Moreover, the current account that is connected to the
blockchain has been fetched inside the function and displays
it on the page.
• The frontend of Localhost 3000 network:
The frontend of the system, which was run on the Command
Prompt, with authentication that was proceeded by using the
private key from the Ganache and imported to the MetaMask.
Once the account was set on the MetaMask the user can cast
the vote and the account address appeared at the “your
account” text. Therefore, the MetaMask triggered the Remix
Application and started to deploy. Once done voting the admin
able to view the transaction of the voter from MetaMask
history. Figure 3 shows the frontend of the localhost network.
• The frontend of Rinkeby:
This section shows the interface of the system that created
using Dapp Builder using the Rinkeby Network. The polling
agent account can end the voting session while the voter’s
accounts are only able to cast the vote. The polling agent is
checked for the voter attendance and give an account for the
voters to cast the vote. At the end of the voting section, the
polling agent collects the candidate voting result. Figure 4
shows the frontend of the Rinkeby network
C. Case Study
A case study was done to summarize the real outcome of
the analysis. Firstly, the case of the e-voting system using
blockchain. Secondly, to compare the e-voting system using
blockchain against the e-voting system using non-blockchain.
Finally, the case to detect fraud attempts. From these cases,
the advantage of blockchain is explained.
 Fig. 5. Result on Dapp application

Fig. 3. Frontend on the Localhost network

Fig. 4. Frontend of the Rinkeby network

• Analysis of the First Case on Normal Voting using

Blockchain:
The normal voting cases in blockchain show that the voters
have cast the vote and unable to select another candidate
again, in which the registered voters would receive the voting
key during registering. It gives the voters opportunity to make
exactly one chance to cast a vote after which the key becomes
obsolete and cannot be used again. The normal voting cases in
blockchain show that the voters can cast the vote and unable
to end the voting session. Each voter was given an account
number to cast the vote. The voter has only one chance to cast
the vote wisely. Even though, the hash file is transparency but
the voter unable to recognize the previous voter’s identity.
Figure 5 and Figure 6 show the results of voting that received
by each candidate
• Analysis of the Second Case on Comparison of E-
voting using Blockchain versus E-voting using Non-
Blockchain:
The comparison between blockchain in the voting system and
other voting systems proved that the blockchain voting system
is can be applied in the real application. A normal voting
system able voters to view the poll interface even after casting
Fig. 6. Result on localhost
the vote. This makes the voters attempt fraud for the second
time. Figure 7 shows the interface of the other e-voting
system while Figure 8 shows the candidate results that the
voters cast vote for two (2) candidates.
• Analysis of the Third Case on Fraud Detection:
The second case was done to detect the fraud attempt. Figure
9 shows the fraud detection on the localhost, in which the
voter from account 7 tried to vote twice for the same person.
This happens when the voter double clicks the vote button and
confirm the transaction twice. The first transaction has been
confirmed and added into the block of the contract while the
second transaction was failed due to the same account number
that tried to send two transactions at once. Therefore, the
blockchain able to detect that account 7 tried to send the vote
twice and do not let the second vote add to the block.

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 Fig. 7. Interface for other e-voting system Fig. 9. Fraud detection on localhost

TABLE II. PERCEPTION ON BLOCKCHAIN E-VOTING SYSTEM

Scale
Case Question Mean Perception
1 2 3 4 5
Q1 and 7 8
1st - - - 4.5 Positive
Q2 (46.7%) (53.3%)
Q3 and 6 9
2nd - - - 4.6 Positive
Q4 (40%) (60%)

3rd Q5 - - - 2 13 4.9 Positive

(13.3%) (86.7%)

is possible to be implemented for the UTHM Student

Fig. 8. Result on other e-voting system
D. Evaluation of Proposed System
To evaluate the proposed system a questionnaire was done
for 15 respondents. There were consists of two parts in the
questionnaire which are demographic information analysis
and perception of the respondent that used the blockchain e-
voting system. Firstly, a demo of the proposed system was
shown to the respondent before the respondent answer the
questionnaire; 5 questions were involved, which Q1 and Q2
for 1st Case, Q3 and Q4 for 2nd Case, and Q5 for 3rd Case.
Then, all the data was collected and analyzed in terms of a pie
chart and bar chart to show the frequency and percentage of
the evaluation. Summarise of respondent perception analysis
for question Q1 to Q5, are tabulated as in Table II.
• Perception of Respondent
This part explained the perception of the respondent
that used the blockchain e-voting system. The
questionnaire consists of 5 questions. The questions are
based on the respondent perceptions with 5 levels of
scale, 1- Very Disagreed, 2- Disagreed, 3-Neutral, 4-
Agreed, and 5- Very Agreed.
• Q1: Preferences on Using Blockchain E-voting
System:
From question 1 there are 7 respondents or 46.7%
agreed with the preference on using blockchain e-
voting system while 8 respondents with 53.3% stated
very agreed to use the e-voting on the blockchain.
Thus, can be concluded, that e-voting using blockchain
Representative Council election.
• Q2: Satisfaction of the Blockchain E-Voting System
From the analysis of this question, there were 7
respondents (46.7%) satisfied with the e-voting system
while 8 respondents (53.3%) stated that they are very
satisfied. Therefore, it can be said that the proposed
system fulfills the respondent’s perception.
• Q3: Analysis of the E-voting:
This question stated to find out the respondent’s perception
of the security part for the e-voting using blockchain. There
were 9 (60%) respondents very agree to feels the system is
secure and anonymity to be implemented. Hence, 6
respondents with 40% stated that they are agreed. From this
analysis, proved that all respondents are agreed with the
statement that the e-voting on the blockchain is secure and
confidentiality for the voters to cast the vote
• .Q4: Time Saving on E-Voting In Blockchain:
The following question mentioning on the time-saving
analysis on e-voting using blockchain. There were 9
respondents (60%) very agreed on the time saving during
casting the vote. Hence, 6 respondents (40%) agreed that the
blockchain e-voting system is time-saving. From this
analysis, the proposed system showed that it is time-saving
and convenient for the voters to cast the vote.
• Q5: Fraud attempt on e-voting system:
The last question for the questionnaire is to find out the
review of respondents on e-voting using blockchain that can
be avoided from fraud attempts. Therefore, there were 13
respondents (86.7%) stated very agreed that e-voting using
blockchain avoid fraud happens while 2 respondents with
13.3% agreed with that statement.

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 IV. CONCLUSION
Blockchain E-voting system help to avoid or minimize
fraud during the UTHM Student Representative Council
election. The system has successfully developed and comply
with the objectives, however, some improvements can be
considered in the future for a better system; in terms of
practicality and user friendly. With the blockchain
technology, it appears that the future is bright and promising.
The analysis result and system designed has been stated in the
result section, showing that most of the respondent very
agreed with the proposed system; 53.3% and
above. Moreover, there are advantages of the UTHM e-voting
system using blockchain technology, including user-friendly,
easy to use by the administrator, election authority, and voters
due to the understandable interface of the e-voting system.
Thus, this system able to detect the fraud happens with 86.7%
very agreed. As a conclusion, the questionnaire successfully
proved that e-voting on the blockchain are satisfied and secure
for the voter to cast the vote.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The financial support received from Universiti Tun
Hussein Onn Malaysia is gratefully acknowledged.
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