A Modernized Voting System Using Fuzzy Logic and Blockchain Technology

There has always been a very low turnout of voters on election day. Statistics shown later on in the article would show that even in most developed countries, more than 30% of the eligible voters don’t cast their votes due to one issue or the other.

Another problem with the existing voting system is that the voters are able to cast just a single vote. Instead, if the voters were given an option of ranking the candidates by their choice, as to who is more likely to support their cause and opinions, possibly, one of the other candidates would have been a better choice, satisfying a greater number of people.

Technology is the solution to most problems if not all, in today’s world. When e-commerce to house hunting can all be done online, a secure voting structure should not be out of reach of technology. The purpose of this paper is to cater to the two aforementioned problems and provide a constructive technical solution to address the same. The methodology would enable more eligible voters to vote for their candidates and enable them to rank the candidates from best choice to the worst, so that, on aggregate, the candidate who is more likely to help a greater number of people, or whose agenda aligns with the demands of a greater number of people, is elected the winner.

The main objective of this article is to provide a novel way to address and mitigate these major limitations and blockades in terms of the traditional voting process. There have been solutions provided in the past to introduce e-Voting, like in CAWI[15] and TrueVote being tried in the past, in some constituencies of Paris, London, Italy, and Finland with varying degrees of success. They were however curtailed in favor of the traditional voting system, owing to certain limitations and their vulnerabilities of a typical centralized system[16].

In this article, the objective is to make use of decentralized technology like blockchain and changing the traditional voting process using fuzzy logic, to address the problems of why people do not vote and how to make voting more secure. It is a two-pronged problem, which would essentially require a two-part solution, as would be explained through the course of this article.

• II.    Materials And Methods

The Problem

The first part of the problem is related to low voter turnout. There can be multiple reasons in today’s practical world, why one may be unavailable on a particular day, be it due to the work, or illness, or simply

Fig.1. US Voter turnout statistics 1918-2018

lethargy to go out and stand in a queue to cast the vote. Let’s take the UK for example. During the election day of 2019, there were innumerable reports of people having to stand in long queues for over half an hour to one hour, just to cast a simple vote. In the UK, the voting day is not declared a government holiday. So, those who even decided to turn up to vote had to miss some part of their day’s work, face the trouble of going to and from the polling station, and stand in the queue to cast their vote. In countries like India, people polling days are generally declared a government holiday, so that people can take the time out to go to the polling station and cast their vote. This leads to the government offices and businesses losing tremendous amounts of money, simply because it is an election day, which is unacceptable.

The statistics for the US elections (as shown in Figure 1, sourced from [8]) over the years, it would paint a picture that despite being one of the most advanced countries in the world, the highest voter turnout has been 64% in the last 100 years. This means, more than 1/3rd of the eligible never cast their votes per election. That count of missed votes was close to 100 million in the 2016 presidential elections. If we take the example of another such advanced country, the UK, voter turnout there has been woefully low as well (as shown in Figure 2, sourced from [9]), with the last 2019 General elections registering for just 67.3% votes. This means, close to 1/3rd of the eligible voters did not cast their votes.

Besides these, there are the obvious concerns of rigging, wrong votes, and people not being able to reach the polling station due to multiple socio-economic reasons. There is also the chance of human error when counting the ballot. There is also the obvious problem of infrastructure. To organize an election, each government has to spend huge sums of money to buy equipment, organizing polling stations, getting postal services, employing people to preside over polling stations, employing people to count the ballot, etc. According to reports, the UK General election in 2017 cost the government just over £140 million.

The second part of the problem is with people not being able to select the most suitable candidate aligning to the views and opinions of the most percentage of people. For example, say there are 3 candidates (A, B and C) in a constituency and the voter has to select just 1 of the 3 in the present-day voting system. Let’s say 40% of voters would vote for Candidate A, 25% for candidate B and 35% for candidate C. The clear measure says candidate A is the clear winner when that candidate was not the choice of 60% of the voters, leaving them disgruntled and disillusioned about the voting system.

Fig.2. UK Voter Turnout Statistics 1918-2019