Free Voting Platform

smartstellar

Stellar Workshops

Summary:

FreeVoting - Voting Service secured on the Stellar Blockchain to enable independent, immutable and verifiable elections.

Category:

Applications

Goals:

We want to provide a full working voting platform which can be used in all countries, the objectives are:

1) Creation and administration of election settings
2) Voters can participate without owning a crypto account
3) Authentication based on email and two-factor-authentication (mobile, authcode, ...)
4) Automated creation of public election documents secured by hash in the Stellar blockchain
5) Automated creation of personal voting documents which prove the election participation
6) Vote submission from client browser (JS) to provide anonymity.
7) Creation of election token to enable easy to understand transparency on voting results.

Description:

Due to the covid-19 situation I see a need of "easy to use" election platforms. With our solution every organization can vote online without the need of meeting in person. I also got inspired by the last SCF submission of stellot.com and discussed the blind signature approach with the submitter to enable full anonymity.

Why is the voting platform valuable for Stellar?

The Stellar network will be exposed to a wider community which has not been in touch with crypto or Stellar yet. It also will show and prove the unique features of Stellar. Only with fast transaction times, it is possible to create a responsive blockchain voting solution.

This application will enable a free and independent voting solution for all countries with instable government structures . In this sense we see our platform as another solution to enable democratic structures in remote areas. Similar to the Stellar projects which enable free banking services.

Technical Solution

To achive the main requirements we created a process which is based on the following aspects:

1) Election Token: For each election we create a unique Stellar token which is used for all voting activites of this election.

2) Each voter has one vote: We use the specific Stellar infrastructure of channel accounts and sequence number
to ensure that one user only can vote one time by javascript within the browser.

3) Transparence: The vote submission will be done directly via Javascript from the voters browser. The
transaction id of the vote entry will be shown immediatly to the voter. This means the vote goes directly from voter (browser) to the network. The server can not interferre into the submission process.

4) Proof of Documents: There are two election documents:
a) the election setup PDF with all voting details and voter emails and
b) the election results PDF.

The hash of both documents is written into the Stellar blockchain to prove all election details for later reference.

5) Election Audit: We also plan to have a third party to do an audit on the election process. If the election went
fine, a thrird party can approve that the election was done according to the rules.

Timeline

Q1 2020 Create authentication and communication workflow ✓
Q1 2020 Setup website with responsive user interface ✓
Q1 2020 Develop additional Stellar modules to handle election functions ✓

Q2 2020 Admin interface to enable election creation ✓
Q2 2020 Email authentication ✓
Q2 2020 Write PDF hashes and document links into blockchain ✓
Q2 2020 Working prototype available ✓

Q3 2020 Prototype testing
Q3 2020 Finalize design tasks (pdf, email)
Q3 2020 Setup own domain address
Q3 2020 Enable hidden results during election phase and additional platform features

Q4 2020 Integrate blind signature algorithm
Q4 2020 Pentests, security, stability and scaling tests
Q4 2020 2FA authentication with mobile / google-authcode
Q4 2020 and 2021 Establish ambassador progam and product marketing

Links:

Website: https://blueorion.cc/votehome
Live Election - Best Covid-19 Precautions: https://blueorion.cc/elinvite-272-gVjrY8ejliEYonpD9UbxqCk6dzISsr29
Documentation: https://blueorion.cc/documents/BlueOrion-Voting-Platform.pdf
Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=MSsRZPwuLq0
Keybase Team: https://keybase.io/team/blueorion
Keybase User: smartstellar

Twitter | Linkedin | Meetups Munich

Tags:

voting, election, ballot, voting receipt

As always feedback and critic is welcome to improve the solution and the user interface. We are also looking out for prototype testers. If you are interested please join our keybase team.

smartstellar

Voting Platform
Figure 1: Shows the 3 main Stellar features to enable transparent and immutable voting.

Voting Platform
Figure 2: Shows an example of 3 presigned transactions. Each transactions represents one voting option. The final submit is done on client side (browser).

Voting Platform
Figure 3: Shows the voting page to select one of the options.

Voting Platform
Figure 4: Shows the results page. Total votes done. Valid votes need to be submitted in the election period and have one token as transfer volume.

Voting Platform
Figure 5: By using a different token for each election you get a nice overview on all voting activities.
https://stellar.expert/explorer/testnet/asset/Election149-GAP4YE6P3JLZ5GR3HM4Z3KP2GM3AAPDJJ3SBLAFGXN4NVKKHGYKTRW5B

Scopuly

smartstellar An important project in our unstable political time. How do you plan to protect the results from the markups of voters?

tyvdh

You've shown us what it looks like but I'd really also like to see more of the technical details for how this works. A video walkthrough or blog post series going through the steps above as well as explaining how that moves safely into and out of the blockchain would be great. Details, details, details. Our community deserves the details delivered on a silver plater not shotgun scattered all over the internet for them to have to research and uncover themselves.

You're probably safe from disqualification even if you left it as is but our community deserves better than a few screenshots.

smartstellar

tyvdh Thanks for the feedback, we will add more information and details. We have been working hard to get the full working prototype ready and happy to present that. We are testing now on all aspects and welcome everybody to send us additional feedback. We are also looking for testers, if somebody likes to support, let us know.

smartstellar

Scopuly Thanks for the feedback.

The core structure is the usage of channel accounts with one specific sequence-number for each vote. Lets say you have 3 options to vote for. The user (client browser side) gets 3 presigned transactions, all with the same sequence number. So the voter can only submit one of them. After one is submitted the other two transactions get invalid.

Regarding results, all votes need to use the created election-token (only valid for one specific election). So any other transactions which might happen on the election account are simply ignored, because they are not valid.

Does this answer your question or was it directed towards something else.

As I wrote above I will update the technical background of the voting within the next days. Currently I'm working on the mobile versions, as it turned out that downloading voting documents will complicate the user experience. It works fine with desktop browsers, but on mobile it's a different story. Thanks to @wouterarkink for testing on iOS.

smartstellar

I just updated the description and screenshots to give more technical details and background information. We also plan to have a video in place as we proceed with the prototype.

smartstellar

For all who want to know more about the details, we will present our solution

this Thursday 2nd of July at 20:00 CET (Berlin), 14:00 ET (New York), 11:00 PDT (San Francisco).
and on Friday 3rd of July at 09:00 CET (Berlin), 12:30 IST (Dehli), 17:00 AEST (Sydney)

We will present the election creation and voting proccess. Free dial in with https://hello.freeconference.com/conf/call/6439049
As we will provide the service for free, we are looking for ambassadors to promote the platform.

I'm looking forward to meet you in the call

smartstellar

Thanks for all who joined our call on Thursday and Friday.

We received some inspiration and also feedback on the usage on Safari/Apple. We will now prepare a video to present the whole workflow and explain the usage of the Stellar features within the voting process.

smartstellar

We now created the video presentation, see entry above.
Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=MSsRZPwuLq0

OrbitLens

Hey,
I tried to create a poll using your service. The poll creation wizard completed without any problems or error messages, but in the end I didn't receive invitation emails. I used temporary mailboxes on the maildrop.cc, so maybe it's the case. Or maybe because I set the beginning date and the end date of the survey to the same day (as I understand, this means that the poll should be active only one day, but the service might handle this situation incorrectly).

A few more notes and questions:

Maybe it worth using something like a to-do list UX pattern for voting options. For instance, http://todomvc.com/examples/react/
It would be nice to have multiple-choice answer options (selecting 2 or more options).
Is it possible to make an open voting instead of sending invites?
"Title not valid, needs to have between 5 and 25 charakters" Why such a limitation?
It worth adding settings to enable answer options randomization, otherwise the voting results may be distorted (social studies show that there not-randomized surveys tend to show clear bias towards the first few listed options).

Really like the overall wizard interface, looks neat and clear. I hope you'll fix the problem I mentioned above or tell me what I was doing wrong, so I could continue to explore it.

smartstellar

OrbitLens Thanks for feedback and suggestions. The UX pattern of http://todomvc.com/examples/react/ looks good. I check all points and will provide an update here.

smartstellar

OrbitLens Here is my feedback on your points:

Implemented / Solved

Invitation email: I checked the service you used (maildrop.cc), looks like this email-service is not active. I'm using this service to create temporary emails: https://temp-mail.org/
Start and end date: it can be set to the same day, this is not a problem.
Limitation on title length: is changed to min length of 3 chars.
Answer options should be randomization: is now implemented

In Discussion

UX pattern for voting options http://todomvc.com/examples/react/: I like it and will put on my todo list. For now the priority to will be on security and overall workflow.
Multiple-choice answer options: yes also a good extension to have in the future. Depending on the possible combinations of the vote, it could be quite a high number of presigned transactions to be created. But should be no problem.
Open voting (instead of using email auth): I was thinking on this one, but cheating is quite easy on a open voting system, even if you capture the IP and other data. There could be a usage for simple polls where user have no interest to cheat.
@All: what does the community think about the value of open voting (no athentication) in combination with blockchain.

I'm looking forward to more feedback like from @OrbitLens. The system is active on publicnet and everyone can use it for free: https://blueorion.cc/voteadmin

OrbitLens

Yep, the previous problem was caused by maildrop.cc. Who would know? I used that service in the past and it worked without any problems. Continued testing and here are some notes:

The subject of the email I received states "Admin Init - 238". It would be great to write something more intuitive.
I thought that once the creator clicks the activation link, all users specified in the invites field will automatically receive email invitations with the survey links (at least that how it works in traditional online survey systems). But you actually send the poll invitation link that has to be sent directly to the respondent by the survey initiator. When I click the link the system asks for the authentication. I had to copy-paste the respondent address email again, and only then the respondent receives the invitation email. If you worried that people will use your system for spamming, ask for the survey creation fee (like, 100XLM) to prevent potential bad actors from exploiting it.

When I finally got to the next step, the website returned the following error:

Fatal error: Uncaught ArgumentCountError:
Too few arguments to function p_election_voter_options(), 2 passed in /var/www/blueorion.cc/public_html/index_election.php on line 88 and exactly 3 expected in /var/www/blueorion.cc/php/p_election.php:354
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/blueorion.cc/public_html/index_election.php(88): p_election_voter_options(Array, '<!DOCTYPE html>...')
#1 {main} thrown in /var/www/blueorion.cc/php/p_election.php on line 354

(the link itself: https://blueorion.cc/elvote-238-bIO1qj2e9Tdn5S3lYEhKy7QN6mL2Sw9nZUmaC6p8rEi4V7Yupo0VgfPjkATbMtDs)

Also, I checked the screenshot and the link on the block explorer. The voting progress and results are recorded using custom token, that's very cool! It potentially allows using poll results in smart contracts logic. This a core building block for DAOs and governance. At the moment I don't fully understand where those tokens lend in the end, so looking forward to continue testing once you fix the issue with the server.

One more suggestion regarding results. I assume that you write aggregated results in a file upon survey competition and save them on your server. This is not really decentralized or durable, since your server can go offline or switch to some other protocol in the future. How about query and show all results on the fly when a user visits the survey info page? Everything is stored on the ledger, so you can fetch all transactions and aggregate results using js on the client side. This sounds like a more "trustless approach"; the results calculation logic doesn't depend on your backend in this case.

Re: open voting – you can list all on-going surveys on the website, but invite users into the poll by sending survey tokens to their accounts when they click a "participate" button. Alternatively, you can also check additional preconditions before sending tokens and allow only specific users based on the survey participation criteria (e.g. only accounts older than one year, or accounts with at least 100 EURT, or only accounts holding Reddit photon tokens).

smartstellar

OrbitLens Thanks again for testing. Based on your last feedback, I started working on an open voting version. I still think open elections or surveys might be not the main focus, but it would be good to draw more attention to the platform, as it would be very easy to provide a participation link (without knowing the email). Also a participation button towards ongoing surveys on the website is a great idea.

Here is my feedback on your last entry:

Implemented / Solved

Website Error: is fixed now (function call was not updated on the prod-server) Note: as you posted the authenticated link above anybody can vote using this link. After one time voting the link will be not valid any more.

In Discussion

Email subject: "Admin Init - 238": yes true its very technical, as for the prototype I keep it simple, but definitely can be improved
Automatically receive email invitations: As you write currently the admin needs to send the invitation email to the voters by himself. This has the advantage that the admin can define the email text by himself. I propably will provide the option, if a) the admin wants to send the email by himself or b) the emails will be sent automatically (this is necessary anyway, if we have a higher number of voters)
Prevent spamming: yes I installed that email verification on election creation to avoid spamming. To ask for a fee could be an option. As for now, giving easy access to test is important and I want to keep it free of fees.
Decentralized check on results:
a) as implemented: all votes are written into the blockchain and therefore the results can be reproduced any time without the server, just by counting the votes/memos.
b) as implemented: the results pdf is hashed and also written into the blockchain, so if you store the pdf you can prove the results anytime later on without relying on the server
c) currently we check the entries on the blockchain and store it temporary to have a fast access. As you write there also could be a script which creates the voting results on the fly. Then this would be a open source script anybody can execute to get the results on a certain election. And our platform is not needed at all. Did you mean that? Maybe that script could be also provided by third parties/blockexplorer?
"participate" button: great idea, also regarding the additional preconditions

OrbitLens

No luck for me... Managed to receive invitations and get to the voting page, but couldn't complete the voting. This time because of the fee surge pricing. A few observations based on the analysis of raw XDR of the transaction.

You always set the minimum transaction fee and it's impossible to get it submitted into the ledger when the fee surge pricing occurs. I tried like 8 times during the 15 minutes timespan and haven't succeeded. The horizon always returns 504 Gateway Timeout, and your UI shows the followoing error: Connection Error. Your vote failed due to missing connection to the Stellar network. Make sure you have a stable internet connection, wait some minutes and try again by using your email voting link. Which is not exactly accurate as the problem is not with the internet itself, but the fee surge pricing. Current fee stats can be fethced from the https://horizon-testnet.stellar.org/fee_stats endpoint. At the time of writing the minimum accepted base fee was 200 stroops.
What if the answer option is larger than the memo? Probably it worth using answer identifier options – in combination with the answer option text (2. The text itself) or the identifier alone (2).

smartstellar

OrbitLens Here is my feedback:

Implemented / Solved

Open elections (without email authentication): I now implemented also open elections. Mainly for demonstration purposes, as it provides an easy access to an example election. You can participate on "Best Covid-19 Precautions?" by using this link: https://blueorion.cc/elinvite-254-ljUh2ixIgXyBflPFcgO18394t5B8sySu
Minimum transaction fee: is fixed now. Transaction fees are set to a sufficient price level.
We also added the slides used in the youtube-video: https://blueorion.cc/documents/BlueOrion-Voting-Platform.pdf

In Discussion

What if the answer option is larger than the memo? Currently we only allow answer options to a max length of 28 chars. Yes, we also thought about identifier options. For transparency we go with direct text options written into the memo field. This could be changed later

As always we are looking forward to more feedback.

OrbitLens

currently we check the entries on the blockchain and store it temporary to have a fast access. As you write there also could be a script which creates the voting results on the fly. Then this would be a open source script anybody can execute to get the results on a certain election. And our platform is not needed at all. Did you mean that? Maybe that script could be also provided by third parties/blockexplorer?

You can simply create a tiny NPM package for this purpose. In this case any interesting party could install it on their website to verify or display voting results. We can also host such verification page on StellarExpert once your app goes in production.

As a side note, try to play around with existing survey engines, like SurveyMonkey or Typeform. They are building online surveys for years and have a lot of ready-to-use receipts on how to implement invitations and prevent spamming while offering great UX for the respondents.

Freitag

OrbitLens To add to this idea, I'd like to mention that you can also use the new web standard for custom elements. This will let you create an exportable component that can be inserted on any static website. Here's an example of voting implemented through said custom element

Eddy

Thanks for all of the information. Really usefull