Blockchain for Secure Voting: Feasibility and Challenges

Abstract

Traditional and digital voting systems both have their flaws, such as being vulnerable to fraud, having limited auditability, and being controlled by a central authority, which poses a growing threat to the honesty, openness, and safety of elections. This study seeks to solve the problem by exploring the potential of a voting system built on the blockchain that would guarantee voter anonymity, eliminate single points of failure, and offer end-to-end verifiability. A hybrid blockchain architecture is proposed, combining permissioned networks for high performance with public blockchain anchoring for transparency and fairness. A prototype implemented on Hyperledger Fabric was evaluated through simulated municipal elections with 10,000 virtual voters, achieving an average vote processing latency of 0.75 seconds, throughput of 4,000 votes per minute, 100% vote integrity, 99.97% system uptime, and full voter anonymity via zero-knowledge proofs. The results confirm that the proposed system can meet the performance, scalability, and privacy requirements for secure digital elections, while identifying key challenges—such as scalability, regulatory compliance, and digital inclusion—that must be addressed for real-world deployment.