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Blockchain Assisted Voting in Academic Councils

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Blockchain and Applications, 4th International Congress (BLOCKCHAIN 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 595))

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Abstract

Councils are a common organisational structure of Portuguese Universities and Polytechnic Institutes. They make the key decisions, in these organisations, by nominal voting at assembly meetings. The COVID pandemic forced the remote work upon most organisations, including universities and polytechnic institutes. Assuming that a remote assembly requires additional efforts in order to guarantee the integrity of the majority decisions taken by votes expressed by its members, opportunity arises for the use of a blockchain-assisted voting system. Benefits of blockchain, such as verifiability, immutability, tamper resistant, and its distributed nature appear to be a good fit. We propose a novel blockchain-assisted system to support the decision making of academic councils that operate by nominal voting in assemblies, gathering remotely and online.

This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project LA/P/0063/2020.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ESTG, Politécnico do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    João Alves

  2. CIICESI, ESTG, Politécnico do Porto, CRACS and INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal

    António Pinto

Authors
  1. João Alves
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  2. António Pinto
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to João Alves .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Informática y Automática, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Javier Prieto

  2. Parque Tecnológico de la Salud (PTS), Granada, Spain

    Francisco Luis Benítez Martínez

  3. University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Stefano Ferretti

  4. Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain

    David Arroyo Guardeño

  5. Facultad de Derecho, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Pedro Tomás Nevado-Batalla

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Alves, J., Pinto, A. (2023). Blockchain Assisted Voting in Academic Councils. In: Prieto, J., Benítez Martínez, F.L., Ferretti, S., Arroyo Guardeño, D., Tomás Nevado-Batalla, P. (eds) Blockchain and Applications, 4th International Congress . BLOCKCHAIN 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 595. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21229-1_17

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