Enhancing Electronic Voting Security Using Blockchain and Adaptive Biometric Authentication

Abstract

Electronic voting systems have significantly improved the efficiency of electoral processes; however, challenges related to security, voter impersonation, and vote tampering still exist. This project proposes a secure and transparent electronic voting system that integrates biometric authentication with blockchain technology to address these issues.The system utilizes facial recognition as the primary authentication method and implements a fingerprint-based fallback mechanism using hash comparison to ensure reliable and privacy-preserving identity verification. Instead of storing raw fingerprint data, the system converts fingerprint inputsinto hashed representations, enhancing data security and preventing unauthorized access.Votes are recorded on an Ethereum-based blockchain using smart contracts, ensuring immutability,transparency, andpreventionof duplicatevoting. Eachvoteis stored asa secure transaction witha uniquehash, allowing verification while maintaining voter anonymity.Experimental results demonstrate that the system successfully provides accurate authentication, secure vote recording, real-time result updates, and effective prevention of duplicate voting. The proposed solution offers a scalable, secure, and trustworthy approach for modern digital voting systems.

Introduction

The text presents a hybrid electronic voting system that combines blockchain technology with adaptive biometric authentication to improve election security and integrity.

Traditional electronic voting systems face issues such as voter fraud, weak identity verification, centralized control, and lack of trust. While blockchain-based systems (e.g., EVOTE) improve transparency and prevent vote tampering by storing votes as immutable transactions, they mostly rely on wallet-based authentication, which verifies digital ownership but not real human identity.

To address this gap, the proposed system integrates biometric verification (face recognition as primary, fingerprint as fallback) with Ethereum blockchain smart contracts. Biometric data is securely encrypted using AES-256-GCM, and voter uniqueness is ensured using hashed identifiers stored on-chain. This prevents duplicate voting and strengthens identity assurance.

The system architecture includes a frontend voting interface, backend authentication and processing, encrypted database storage, and a blockchain layer for immutable vote recording. During voting, users are authenticated biometrically, issued a short-lived token, and their vote is recorded on the blockchain only after verification.

Experimental results show:

• Facial authentication: ~1.4 seconds (up to ~2.3 seconds with fallback)
• Smart contract cost: ~68,000–82,000 gas per vote
• Transaction confirmation: ~3–5 seconds
• Throughput: ~15–20 transactions per second

Compared to traditional and wallet-based blockchain voting systems, the proposed approach provides stronger identity verification, higher security, resistance to replay and duplicate voting attacks, and improved transparency, with only a small trade-off in latency and computational cost.

Conclusion

This research introduces a deployed hybrid electronic voting architecture that integrates adaptive biometric verification with blockchain-based immutability in a unified framework. In contrast to prior approaches that focus solely on either decentralized vote storage or standalone biometric authentication, the proposed system combines both components within a performance-evaluated implementation environment. Empirical results demonstrate that the framework ensures reliable identity validation, controlled gas expenditure, and stable transaction throughput while maintaining practical usability. These findings indicate that the integration of adaptive multi-stage biometric authentication with smart contract–driven vote uniqueness offers a scalable,tamper-resistant, and security-oriented enhancement over traditional and wallet-dependent digital voting solutions. Experimental evaluation demonstrated that the proposed framework achieves practical authentication latency (1.4–2.3 seconds), sustainable transaction throughput, and optimized gas consumption within a permissioned blockchain environment. Compared to traditional voting systems, the proposed model significantly improves transparency, tamper resistance, and result processing speed [1], [2]. In comparison with wallet-basedblockchain voting systems, it enhances real-world identity verification by incorporating biometric authentication rather than relying solely on digital signatures [5], [6]. While the proposed framework demonstrates practical feasibility and improved election integrity, several enhancements can further strengthen the system. One potential extension involves integrating hardware-based biometric devices, particularly real-time fingerprint scanners, to replace template-based fallback verification and improve authentication reliability in live election environments. Additionally, scalability can be enhanced through the adoption of Layer-2 blockchain solutions or rollup-based architectures to reduce transaction cost and confirmation latency during large-scale deployments. Future research may also explore decentralizedidentity frameworks and privacy-preserving techniques such as zero-knowledge proofs to minimize centralized biometric custody while maintaining strong identity assurance. Further optimization of transaction batching mechanisms and distributed node configuration could improve throughput for high-volume voting scenarios. These advancements would enable the proposed hybrid blockchain–biometric architecture to evolve toward large-scale, privacy-preserving, and production-ready digital election systems.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Eluri Narmada, Chinnam Bhuvaneswari, Cheekurthi Devi, Rithin Gude, Gollapalli Venugopal, Arava Abhiram. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.