Toward Secure Electronic Voting: A Survey on E-Voting Systems and Attacks

The trend of electronic voting has risen in recent years as an alternative to paper ballot elections, bringing meaningful benefits in terms of efficiency and error proneness. However, real-world applications have demonstrated significant vulnerabilities and susceptibility to software errors that could be exploited by malicious entities. In fact, the difficult challenge of electronic voting lies in the need to incorporate multiple, often contradictory, properties into the system design. Moreover, the stakes of any potential vulnerability are amplified due to the high-value applications of e-voting systems. To understand the current landscape of electronic voting and its readiness for real-world implementations, this paper surveys the literature on e-voting systems and related attacks. Emphasis is put on the analysis of the fundamental properties of the reviewed systems, in order to better understand their strengths and weaknesses, and on blockchain-based solutions, given their novelty and potential advantages regarding immutability and transparency. Through the analysis of the current proposals and known attacks, we conclude that the paradigm of electronic voting needs additional research before it is considered secure to use in a general election setting.