Quantum Voting Protocol for Centralized and Distributed Voting Based on Phase-Flip Counting

Abstract:We introduce a quantum voting protocol that uses superposition and entanglement to enable anonymous voting with trusted voting machines, in a centralized setting with a single machine and in a distributed setting where several machines are linked to a voting center through quantum channels. A voter selects a candidate through a restricted ballot interface; the machine encodes the vote as a phase-flip operation, controlled by the voter's identity register, on an entangled candidate state. Tallying is performed by interference with a reference branch followed by a measurement of the candidate register, which reproduces the vote distribution without iterative classical counting. Because every tallying run consumes the quantum state, the machines store the cast choices classically and replay the voting stage for each run. The protocol uses only basic quantum gates (Hadamard and controlled-Z). We provide analytical examples (4 voters with 2 candidates and 8 voters with 3 candidates) and numerical experiments that simulate ideal conditions, depolarizing, memory, readout, and gate noise, faulty or mistaken ballots, larger instances with confidence intervals, and sampling convergence. The simulations reproduce the theoretical tally probabilities in the ideal case and show how the tally is distorted by noise and by faulty ballots; no error correction or mitigation is applied. Voter anonymity is formalized as the indistinguishability of tallying transcripts under vote permutations, and an identity-dephasing step renders the identity register exactly maximally mixed under the stated trust assumptions. The numbers of protocol runs needed for exact tallying and for winner identification are analyzed explicitly.

28 pages, 11 figures, 4 table. submitted

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Information Theory (cs.IT)

arXiv:2510.15243 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2510.15243v4 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.15243 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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