Decentralized and Biometric-Authenticated E-Voting System: A Blockchain-Based Approach

Abstract

Elections play a fundamental role in any democratic system, and ensuring their integrity is of utmost importance. Traditional voting methods, such as paper ballots and Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), suffer from various limitations, including security vulnerabilities, vote tampering, low voter turnout, delays in result processing, and a lack of transparency. Digital voting solutions offer convenience but raise concerns regarding data security and susceptibility to cyber threats. Blockchain technology presents a promising solution to these challenges by providing a decentralized, transparent, and tamper-proof framework for conducting elections. As a distributed ledger system, blockchain records transactions in an immutable and verifiable manner, ensuring the integrity of votes. Key features such as decentralization, cryptographic security, transparency, and anonymity make blockchain a robust choice for secure e-voting. In this paper, we propose and implement a blockchain-based e-voting system using Ethereum smart contracts and Web3.js. Our system enforces single-use voting credentials, preventing duplicate votes, and leverages gas fees to mitigate fraudulent voting attempts. Additionally, we develop a web-based application that demonstrates the practical implementation of blockchain voting, discussing its advantages, challenges, and limitations in real-world scenarios.

Introduction

Summary:

Blockchain technology, originally introduced through Bitcoin, has expanded beyond cryptocurrencies due to its decentralized, transparent, and tamper-proof features. Its immutable distributed ledger makes it ideal for secure applications like e-voting, eliminating the need for a central authority and reducing risks of fraud.

E-voting benefits from blockchain’s cryptographic security and transparency, with platforms like Ethereum enabling smart contracts—self-executing, immutable code—that automate and secure voting processes. Votes are stored as blockchain transactions linked sequentially and immutably, ensuring data integrity.

Existing e-voting systems, such as Estonia’s centralized model using smart ID cards, have shown success but also reveal vulnerabilities like single points of failure and scalability concerns. Other examples include blockchain-based pilot projects in Switzerland and Moscow, illustrating blockchain’s potential to increase trust in elections but also highlighting integration challenges.

The paper presents a web-based e-voting application combining blockchain on Ethereum with biometric authentication (fingerprint verification). The system uses smart contracts to securely record votes, prevent double voting, and maintain transparency while simplifying voter experience by covering blockchain transaction fees through an admin wallet. The application follows an MVC architecture with a React frontend and MongoDB backend storing voter data (excluding votes, which are on-chain).

While the system is promising for small-scale elections, challenges remain in preserving voter anonymity and scaling for large populations. Public blockchain transparency conflicts with ballot privacy, motivating ongoing research into cryptographic solutions to protect voter identity.

Conclusion

Inthispaper,we introduced a blockchain-based electronic voting system that leverages smart contracts to provide a secure and cost-effective method for conducting elections while ensuring voter privacy. By comparing our system to traditional voting methods, we demonstrated that blockchain technology offers an innovative approach for democratic countries to transition from traditional pen-and-paper elections to a more efficient, transparent, and secure election process. E-voting continues to be a topic of debate among both political and technical communities. While there are some successful examples, many systems have either failed to meet the security and privacy standards of traditional elections or have faced significant issues in usability and scalability. However, blockchain-based e-voting solutions, like the one we developed using Ethereum and smart contracts, address many of the critical security concerns, including voter privacy, vote integrity, verification, non-repudiation, and transparent vote counting. Despite these advances, certain aspects, such as voter authentication on a personal level, may still require additional mechanisms, such as biometric verification, to further secure the system. Although blockchain technology holds significant promise, it is still in the early stages of development. Much more research is needed to fully realize its potential, particularly for complex applications like e-voting. Ongoing efforts to improve blockchain’s scalability and security will be essential to enhance its viability for such applications.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Kode Lakshmi Durga Sindhujasri, Kaduputla Manogna, Sutrayeth Hari Yuktha Nanda, Baligiri Thandava Krishna, Attru Hanumantharao. 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.