Application of Blockchain in the Election System in Indonesia

Muhammad Raihan Fahrifi1, Rihansen Ulihdo Purba2, Noval Abdurramadan3*

1
Fakultas Ilmu Terapan, Telkom University, Jl. Telekomunikasi, jawa Barat, Indonesia
muhammadraihanfahrifi@gmail.com
2
Fakultas Ilmu Terapan, Telkom University, Jl. Telekomunikasi, jawa Barat, Indonesia
Rihansen.ulihdo11@gmail.com
3
Fakultas Ilmu Terapan, Telkom University, Jl. Telekomunikasi, jawa Barat, Indonesia
ramadannoval89@gmail.com

Abstrak
Elections are very important events in modern democracies but most people around the world do
not believe that their electoral systems are a major problem for democracies. Even the largest democratic
countries in the world such as Indonesia, the United States, Japan and Indonesia still have flawed electoral
systems. Voting fraud, EVM (electronic voting machine) hacking, election manipulation, and voting at
polling stations are the main problems in the current voting system [5]. In this paper, we investigate the
problems in election voting systems and try to propose an E-voting model that can solve these problems.
This article also aims to evaluate the application of blockchain as a service to implement a distributed
electronic voting system. This section of the paper will highlight some popular blockchain frameworks that
offer blockchain as a service and related electronic E-voting systems based on blockchain that overcome
all limitations, while protecting participant anonymity while remaining open to public inspection.

Keywords: Blockchain, Decentralization, EVM Voting Scheme

1. Introduction
Indonesia, as the third largest democracy in the world, has a complex and layered general
election system, including presidential, legislative and regional elections. With more than 190
million eligible voters, spread across thousands of islands, the logistical challenges of ensuring
free, fair and transparent elections are enormous. Recent elections have highlighted problems such
as voter fraud, logistical inefficiencies, and the huge costs of manually managing ballots. These
challenges highlight the need for innovative solutions to improve the integrity, efficiency and
accessibility of the electoral process.
Blockchain is a relatively new technology, and a representative sample of research is
presented over the last ten years, starting from the beginning of work in this field. Various types of
uses of blockchain and other digital ledger techniques, varying challenges, applications, security
and privacy issues are investigated. Several countries have taken the initiative to do so improving
their voting systems by using blockchain technology and decentralized peer to peer networks
accompanied by public ledgers. (Nakamoto, et al, 2008) [5].
Sierra Leone became the first country in the world to use blockchain technology to verify
voting in the March 2018 elections. The inability to change or delete information from blocks
makes blockchain the best technology for a voting system. Blockchain technology is powered by a
distributed network consisting of a large number of interconnected nodes. Each of these nodes has
a copy of a distributed ledger (information) that contains complete historical information of all
transactions that the network has processed. No single authority controls the network.
If the majority of nodes agree, they accept the transaction. This network allows users to
remain anonymous. Basic analysis of blockchain technology (including smart contracts) shows that
it is a suitable basis for e-voting and, moreover, it has the potential to make e-voting more
acceptable and reliable [6].
But traditional electronic systems do not provide anonymity and integrity whereas blockchain-
based e-voting can solve these problems. Rowena Cullen et al. [1] presents a comparative study
between democracy-based countries that have a certain level of democracy among 167 countries
out of 200 countries. To provide democracy, the government must pay attention to several
important things such as security, health, education, international relations, taxation, and other
benefits for society.
The General Election Commission has made the election process more operational for
different government organizations. Recently there have been many cases where elections have
been observed, while voting practices have not been completely satisfactory and election
procedures have faced different problems with clarity and fairness, and often people are very
confused about their own rights. Additionally, actual voting rights do not reflect the society within
it in terms of leadership configuration.
So, in this case in today's world it has happened to adopt the latest technology. The state of the
art blockchain has been applied to benefit governments and various emerging new sectors. Many
studies show that blockchain technology has had a significant impact on the voting system.
In 1981, David L. Chaum [2] introduced the first blockchain-based electronic voting system
where this system used public key cryptography and blind signatures. After the announcement of
the first blockchain-based voting systems, many researchers have shown interest in this particular
field [3] [4]. Moreover, most of the research is focused only on electronic records and online voting
systems.
E-voting systems can make life easier when voting but on the other hand there are threats to
these traditional systems which are always a concern. The e-voting system we will recommend in
this research will address security issues by using decentralized Blockchain technology and open
source code to develop a secure e-voting system.

2. Methodology
In this present time, Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency are very hot topics nowadays.
Blockchain was first invented by a person name of Satoshi Nakamoto [9]. The Blockchain mainly
contains a list of information which is called blocks and it is a kind of distributed ledger. In each
block, it is containing the transaction data, time of the records, a hash of the previous block. With
the first block, it is called the genesis block or foundation block. Basically, it has no previous hash
and this block contains some default hash value. The basic Blockchain blocks are illustrated in fig.
1. Moreover, each of the blocks is identified by their hash value and this hash is generated using
SHA 256 encryption algorithms [10].

Basic Concept Blockchain

3. Literature Review
There are several Blockchain based e-voting systems. “Agora” Agora stands out as the first
blockchain voting solution that is architected to meet the performance needs of a mission critical
election. This technology runs on a custom blockchain that our team has been developing since
2015.This technology strive to meet the evolving needs of modern voters. Not only do voters
demand greater transparency in their elections, but they also demand more convenient methods of
participating. It allows to enable any authorized voter to participate in an election through their
own digital device, all while guaranteeing the security and transparency of the electoral procedure.
Each step of the election process can be easily understood and open to scrutiny by all
stakeholders (voters, political parties, outside observers and others). All results should be
independently verifiable and auditable. All eligible voters, regardless of location, group
membership or disability, are having reasonable and equal opportunity to cast their ballot. Agora’s
platform protects voter privacy through verifiable ballot encryption and anonymization. The
cryptographic methods that we use to ensure privacy come from widely researched and accepted
models, including threshold ElGamal for ballot encryption and Neff shuffling for ballot
anonymization.
“Digital Voting” It is an integration of the blockchain technology to the current voting system
in the UK in which the voters can vote at a voting district or on a web browser at home. In these
blockchain containing information of who has registered to vote also allows our service to ensure
each voter in unique. Once registered you are then allocated a vote after verification of your
details has been completed. To ensure these registered voters are who they say they are when
voting begins there is a 3 factor authentication method. Further to this we also need to ensure they
are not forced to vote in a particular way so we have incorporated a double-check service where
by users shall be prompted a second time to confirm their submission before the vote is sent; this
also then allows us to almost eradicate accidental votes “Netvote” At the current frequency of
elections and the available pool of eligible voters, there should be at least 15 billion ballots cast
every year. Everyone who wants to vote should.
Every vote should count. Every count should be verified. Netvote is an open source voting
protocol, available now for multiple blockchain platforms. Elections are executed according to
smart contracts and every vote is stored on the blockchain. Netvote currently supports public and
private Ethereum and in the future will support additional blockchain platforms including RChain,
EOS, NEO and Hyperledger. It is a decentralized blockchain-based voting network on the
Ethereum blockchain. Netvote utilizes decentralized apps (dApps) for the user interface of the
system. The Admin dApp allows election administrators to set election policies, create ballots,
establish registration rules and open and close voting. The Voter dApp is used by individual voters
for registration, voting and can be integrated with other devices (such as biometric readers).

4. How the System E-Vote Sipilu (Sistem Pemilihan Umum) Works Using Blockchain

- The first transaction added to the block will be the specific transaction representing the
candidate [7].

- When this transaction is created, it will include the names of potential candidates and will
function as a basic block, with each vote for a particular candidate placed on top of it. Unlike
other transactions, foundation funds are not counted as votes and only contain the names of
candidates.

- The System E-Vote Sipilu (Sistem Pemilihan Umum) allows protest voting, where voters can
cast a blank ballot to show dissatisfaction with all candidates or rejection of the current
political and/or electoral system.

- Every time someone votes, the resulting transaction will be recorded and the blockchain will
be updated.

To ensure system security, the block will contain previous voter information. If a block is
compromised, it will be easy to find out because all blocks are connected to each other [7].
Blockchain is decentralized and tamper-evident, there is no single point of failure. The blockchain
is where the actual voting takes place. The user's vote is sent to one of the nodes in the system, and
that node then adds the vote to the blockchain.
 Blockchain Based Electronic Voting System

According to the structure above, how the e-voting system using blockchain works is:

- Request to vote: Users must log in to the voting system using their credentials - in this case,
the e-voting system will use the Indonesian Population Identification Number, their address,
and the voting confirmation number given to registered voters by the Komisi Pemilihan
Umum (KPU) [ 14]. The system will check all information entered and if it matches a valid
voter, the user will be authorized to vote. The e-Voting system does not allow participants to
create their own identities and register to vote. Systems that allow arbitrary identity creation
are typically vulnerable to Sybil attacks in which attackers claim a large number of fake
identities and fill ballot boxes with invalid votes.

- Voting: Voters must choose to vote for one of the prospective candidates or cast a protest vote.
Voting will be done through a friendly user interface [7]. For each voter, a token is generated
known as Ethereum, with an initial Boolean value of one, once the vote is cast, then the token
becomes 0. A voter can vote if and only if the value of Ethereum is 1. In this way the re-voting
problem can be resolved.

- Vote encryption: After the user casts his vote, the system will generate an input containing the
voter's identification number followed by the voter's full name as well as a hash of the
previous vote. This way each input will be unique and ensure that the encrypted output is also
unique. Encrypted information will be recorded in the block header of each vote cast.
Information associated with each vote will be encrypted using a reverse unknown SHA one-
way hash function. The only theoretically possible way to reverse a hash is to guess the initial
data and encryption method, then hash to see if the results match. This way of hashing votes
makes it almost impossible to reverse engineer it, therefore it is impossible to retrieve voter
information [7].

- Adding votes to the Blockchain: Once the block is created, and depending on the candidate
selected, the information is recorded in the corresponding blockchain. Each block is linked to
a previously cast vote.
5. Opportunities and Benefits of Blockchain in SIPILU E-voting

1) To combat voter tampering, blockchain generates cryptographically secure voting records.

Votes are recorded accurately, permanently, securely and transparently. So, no one can change
or manipulate the sound. Additionally, blockchain maintains participant anonymity and
remains open to public inspection. Although nothing is completely secure, tampering with the
blockchain is almost impossible [8].

2) SIPILU e-voting may encourage more voter participation. For example, a company's annual
general meeting can be an expensive event with low shareholder participation. As cross-border
investments increase, companies face pressure to increase investor engagement. SIPILU e-
voting is a flexible solution that enables secure and cost-effective voting to facilitate
shareholder participation and voting remotely.

3) Additionally, improving identity verification can help increase access and participation.

4) SIPILU e-voting can increase the speed of vote counting. For example, Agora reported that it
published election results on its website five days before the official manual count ended.

5) SIPILU e-voting can eliminate ambiguity.

6) SIPILU e-voting can increase transparency and clarity for voters. As of 2017, 23 countries
around the world have adopted online voting. The current online voting process may be
complicated for some voters. It is not easy to know whether a vote was cast properly or
counted as a vote. As we have noted, blockchain results are publicly auditable. Some security
systems in electronic and online voting platforms may have been developed decades ago and
are vulnerable to tampering. Blockchain's decentralized nature makes attacks more difficult.

7) Finally, with SIPILU E-voting, individual votes will be available to the public, while voters
are disguised behind encrypted keys. This provides greater privacy and security than
traditional ballot boxes and can reduce voter suppression. Malicious actors cannot identify
voters and thus cannot target them [8].

6. Challenges for SIPILU E-Voting system using blockchain

- The government and other stakeholders such as the Komisi Pemilihan Umum (KPU) need to
overcome several major challenges before blockchain is widely used for SIPILU e-voting.
While blockchain is good at providing security and accuracy, public trust and confidence are
critical elements to the success of SIPILU e-voting. Blockchain's complexity may hinder
public acceptance of SIPILU e-voting. Internet access and digital user skills are also concerns.

- Now let's consider the quality of the software. Estimates suggest that there are an average of
15 to 50 defects per 1,000 LOC. For Ethereum, the blockchain-based distributed computing
platform used by Moscow's Active Citizen program (which features smart contracts), the
number is probably double that. This may be due to Ethereum's immaturity. The Economist
quotes a blogger as saying that Ethereum contracts are “hackers' candy.”29 Additionally,
sufficient observations have not been collected to determine the scalability of blockchain-
based platforms [8].
- Traditional voting emphasizes state authority. SIPILU e-voting emphasizes voter transparency.
The SIPILU e-voting process is transparent, decentralized and bottom-up. SIPILU e-voting
may not perform well in societies whose culture and values are less compatible with these
values.

- Additionally, blockchain requires a lot of energy to perform authentication and validation, and
is slow. So, using it for national e-voting may not be practical yet.

- Lastly, SIPILU e-voting will shift power from central actors such as election authorities and
government institutions. Therefore, this technology will likely face resistance from political
leaders who benefit from such status.

- how to improve the quality of digital equality in 3T areas (Outermost, Disadvantaged,

Frontier). because to implement the SIPILU e-voting system, good digital innovation, good
and fast internet access is needed. This all requires the cooperation of all stakeholders,
including the government, other stakeholders, the General Election Commission (KPU), and
most importantly the role of the people in the success of SIPILU e-voting.

- Educate the public in using digital technology. The government must prepare good human
resources

7. Result And Conclusion

Our study introduces blockchain-based SIPILU e-voting that addresses issues of security,
transparency, and trust. By leveraging smart contracts and private blockchain, we ensure secure,
cost-effective and private elections. This approach normalizes the process, increases potential
voter participation, and puts pressure on elected officials. Blockchain transparency improves
auditing and understanding, promising a more democratic election process. The adoption of
blockchain-based e-voting has the potential to revolutionize democracy by ensuring integrity and
empowering the participation of Indonesian citizens.
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