# Electronic Voting System Using an Enterprise Blockchain
## 5 Discussion and Future Work  
The system proposed in this paper can satisfy several requirements of a voting system. The use of Hyperledger Fabric technology and the implementation of a chaincode guarantees each vote's immutability, integrity, and traceability, since actions such as vote counting are implemented at the chaincode level and do not require a central authority. In addition, the proposal allows the possibility of integrating the solution with Hyperledger Explorer, a simple, powerful, well-maintained, open-source utility to browse activity on the underlying blockchain network. In addition, the proposed network structure allows for more flexibility in the network configuration and adapts it to various scenarios. Intermediate CAs (ICAs) are not mandatory, but to reduce the risk of the organization's CA (root) being compromised, one or more ICAs in SuffrageNet may be included. For example, one ICA for both MINTER and VOTER affiliations of the SUFFRAGE organization may be added. The network design supports it. Additionally, due to the treatment given to the ballot as NFT and the inclusion of a bitmap field in a said ballot, the system can be adjusted with relative ease to more than one voting scheme. To use a SoftHSM in the proposed system, Hyperledger Fabric's nodes were modified concerning the BCCSP (Blockchain Cryptographic Service Provider) configuration section  
Figure 12: Depiction of users and operators of the blockchain network. and were recompiled. This configuration prepares the cryptographic standards and algorithms of Hyperledger Fabric's nodes so it can be integrated with a Hardware Security Module (HSM). This feature provides a higher security level in the solution. It is worth mentioning that a SoftHSM is not more secure than an actual HSM. In contrast, an actual HSM is designed with physical security in mind. For example, an HSM is equipped with tamper-detection circuitry for destroying any keys it contains when someone tries to open the hardware case and sniff out the keys with a logic probe. To ensure voters' privacy in their actions, the authentication of the cryptographic identity generated by the CA is decoupled. Each identity is stored in a SoftHSM, protected with the voter's credentials. A voter's signature is inserted into each vote and stored concerning the transaction ID to achieve verifiability. To improve voting untraceability, it was planned to replace the current MSP certificates format (X.509) with Identity Mixer. \"Idemix is a cryptographic protocol suite, which provides strong authentication as well as privacy-preserving features such as anonymity, the ability to transact without revealing the identity of the transactor, and unlinkability, the ability of a single identity to send multiple transactions without revealing that the transactions were sent by the same identity\" [28]. Regarding unlinkability, it is important to note that in X.509 certificate, all attributes have to be revealed to verify the certificate signature. This implies that all certificate usages for signing transactions are linkable. New X.509 certificates need to be used every time to avoid such linkability, which results in a complex key management process. Idemix helps avoid linkability concerning both the CA and verifiers since even the CA cannot link proofs to the original credential. Neither the issuer nor a verifier can tell whether two proofs were derived from the same credential (or from two different ones). The solutions for voting systems using blockchain technology are still immature. The blockchain network can verify the validity of a vote, avoid double-counting, guarantee that votes are cast from an authorized device, but cannot guarantee that the device from which a vote is cast is free of malicious software. Everything indicates that the use of blockchain in voting solutions is evolving in systems similar to the direct recording electronic voting machine (DRE voting machine); the DREs have been successful due to their ease of use and the ability to vote.