{"id":242396,"date":"2026-08-08T02:24:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T07:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/quantum-secure-ballots-demonstrated-in-the-lab"},"modified":"2026-08-08T02:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T07:24:18","slug":"quantum-secure-ballots-demonstrated-in-the-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/quantum-secure-ballots-demonstrated-in-the-lab","title":{"rendered":"Quantum-Secure Ballots Demonstrated in the Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Quantum bits (qubits) enable these conditions. The quantum voting protocol involves creating a quantum state of many quantum-entangled qubits known as a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state, with one qubit for each voter. The state can be prepared so that each qubit measurement randomly produces 0 or 1, but the entanglement guarantees that the total number of 1s is either even or odd. These states can be prepared using, for example, photons as qubits, with 0 and 1 corresponding to distinct polarization states.<\/p>\n

Such a protocol was proposed in 2022 by quantum information theorist Federico Centrone of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology in Spain and his co-workers [3<\/a>]. Implementing it requires that the voters be able to verify that they have been given a true GHZ state and not some other state that subverts the protocol. Such verifications can be carried out, but each qubit can only be used once\u2014either for voting or for verification. So extra sets of GHZ states must be produced for multiple rounds of verification.<\/p>\n

Two research teams have now demonstrated the fundamental features of the protocol using photons as qubits, although several practical challenges remain before it can be used in a real election. Joey Marcellino, a PhD student at the University of Geneva, and his co-workers randomly assign each round as either a verification or a voting round [1<\/a>]. Meanwhile, Laurent-Puig and his colleagues (including Centrone) simply chose to postpone the verification aspect of the protocol for future work [2<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quantum bits (qubits) enable these conditions. The quantum voting protocol involves creating a quantum state of many quantum-entangled qubits known as a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state, with one qubit for each voter. The state can be prepared so that each qubit measurement randomly produces 0 or 1, but the entanglement guarantees that the total number of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}