Leveraging Blockchain for the Design and Realization of a Secure E-Voting Mechanism

The purpose of this paper is to ensure the development of voting system, a secure, transparent and efficient online voting system which will enable the public to vote during elections more effectively and consequently improve the election process. Permitting the use of blockchain technology and secure authentication procedures, the system verifies that votes are recorded correctly, stored in a bonafide manner and counted in a transparent way. Important feature of the system includes secure access and authentication, secure storage of vote and user information and a user-friendly GUI. Security aspects like encryption, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is inbuilt in to protect the voting process from cyber threats like denial-of-service attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks. The backend database of this system is managed by MySQL for its security and scalability. It describes the deficiencies in the current paper-based voting system (inefficiency, human errors, new security concerns). Several software development methodologies are reviewed - Waterfall, Rapid Application Development, and Prototyping - but the Waterfall methodology is selected because of its clear and organized steps. In addition, we consider alternative electronic voting systems i.e. (Direct Recording Electronic Systems, Telephone Voting, Internet Voting) to choose the remote internet voting as the most promising approach.