Voting is an integral part of any true democracy – in fact it might be the very thing that defines democracy. As such, having a secure, reliable and tamper proof way for casting and recording votes is essential.

While voting has come a long way from ballot papers to EVMs, now is the time to make it more secure and at the same time more transparent, so that the continual accusations regarding tampering with EVMs could be laid to rest once and for all. That’s where blockchain comes in.

Blockchain - a shared, secured distributed ledger of transactions, is a very safe means of keeping a record of the votes cast. And hence we have outlined a basic model we would follow using our blockchain based voting service.

We chose to revolutionise the whole concept as EVMs cannot be connected to the internet which is a major setback avoiding real time updates. This also hinders the use of the Blockchain to its full potential.

The main features :-

1. Biometric Identification via fingerprint

-Voters will have to scan their fingerprint in scanners built onto the app – data of which is already kept by the Indian govt in Aadhaar database.

-Does away with the necessity of keeping Voter ID Cards which may contain wrong or forged information.

2. Each constituency would be assigned a numeric code and votes cast for each party candidate per constituency would be recorded in a database.

3. The app would be running on a tablet, setup similar to a POS , and as soon as the voter taps the button in front of his chosen candidate, a scan would run for the authentication of his identity.

4. Assuming proper internet connectivity all over India, with the selection of the candidate, the database will be updated in real time which rules out the possibility of tampering with the EVMs.

5. Along with this, the VVPAT would generate a receipt to assure the voter that his vote was cast right.

6. Decentralization : Citizens who are residing in a constituency apart from their designated one, can go to a pre-assigned polling stations and cast a vote from there for their respective constituencies. Thus the involvement of a third party would not be an issue.

7. Encryption : Encryption will involve the use of a hashing algorithm. Cryptographic hashing is a method for transforming large amounts of data into short numbers that are difficult to imitate. Hashes are mostly used in combination with digital signatures. These functions ensure data integrity. And hence all votes cast by the voter will be securely encrypted by using a hashing algorithm like SHA256. Since these hashes are almost impossible to decode without knowing the appropriate key, it is impossible to tamper with the votes - since even a small change in input data will lead to significant changes in output data and hence any tampering will be easily visible.