ZKP-E-Vote: A Scalable, Receipt-Free and Coercion-Resistant Blockchain Framework for National-Level Electronic Elections

Abstract

Secure, trustworthy electronic elections require four key properties: verifiable eligibility, strong ballot privacy, revoting for coercion resistance, and nation-scale throughput. Existing blockchain-based prototypes address these goals only in fragments, while verified credential to Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) conversion is ad hoc, re-voting schemes leak timing data or exhaust gas limits, and “track-your-vote” features issue receipts that a coercer can demand. ZKP-E-Vote closes these gaps with a fully specified architecture. A compulsory UAE-Pass login feeds a Groth16 circuit that converts government credentials into a non-linkable pseudonym$P$and a zero-knowledge eligibility proof. Ballots embed a monotone counter and a hash-derived nullifier, enabling any voter to overwrite a coerced ballot while revealing nothing regarding their re-vote. After polls close, threshold-decryption verification rooms let citizens confirm their own ballots without exporting a receipt; while a public zk-proof concurrently attests that every tallied ciphertext is the latest for its pseudonym and that the homomorphic total matches the announced result. All proofs are generated off-chain and recursively aggregated; relay nodes batch thousands of ballots into roll-up blocks, fixing onchain state at one 32-byte slot per voter, and bounding verification to a single pairing check per batch. The framework thus unites eligibility privacy, coercion-safe revoting, receipt-free voter assurance, and national-scale feasibility in a single auditable design, offering a concrete roadmap toward a pilot-ready blockchain election system.