Future-Generation Framework for a Blockchain-Powered Election System

Abstract

Integrity and transparency in electoral procedures are essential for the actual functioning of democratic countries. The present voting systems often face numerous issues such as vote rigging, counterfeit ballots, lack of transparency, and inefficiencies. Blockchain-enabled voting systems are promising, but they face challenges in maintaining public trust due to technical concerns, such as transparency, security, privacy, and scalability. The architecture of a Hyperledger-based framework is proposed to design and construct a robust and secure prototype for a blockchain-enabled voting system. Effective algorithms for key electoral processes such as identity management for voter authentication, vote casting, vote counting and vote tallying, using multi-signature validation are deployed. Contemporary cryptographic techniques, such as zero-knowledge proofs, homographic encryption, and digital signatures, ensure that votes are encrypted and anonymized, protecting voter privacy and facilitating a verifiable election process. Through an exploratory work, the recommended prototype using Hyperledger Fabric is compared with conventional electoral systems based on key parameters. This study demonstrates that a blockchain-based election system is able to maintain the integrity and efficiency of state-of-the-art technology by recommending a robust and secure prototype for conducting transparent and verifiable elections.