Received April 7, 2022, accepted May 30, 2022, date of publication June 3, 2022, date of current version June

10, 2022.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3180168

A Framework to Make Voting System

Transparent Using Blockchain Technology
MUHAMMAD SHOAIB FAROOQ 1, USMAN IFTIKHAR 2, AND ADEL KHELIFI 3
1 Department of Computer Science, University of Management and Technology, Lahore 54000, Pakistan
2 Department of Software Engineering, University of Management and Technology, Lahore 54000, Pakistan
3 Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Corresponding author: Muhammad Shoaib Farooq ([email protected])

ABSTRACT A widespread mistrust towards the traditional voting system has made democratic voting in
any country very critical. People have seen their fundamental rights being violated. Other digital voting
systems have been challenged due to a lack of transparency. Most voting systems are not transparent enough;
this makes it very difficult for the government to gain voters’ trust. The reason behind the failure of the
traditional and current digital voting system is that it can be easily exploited. The primary objective is to
resolve problems of the traditional and digital voting system, which include any kind of mishap or injustice
during the process of voting. Blockchain technology can be used in the voting system to have a fair election
and reduce injustice. The physical voting systems have many flaws in it as well as the digital voting systems
are not perfect enough to be implemented on large scale. This appraises the need for a solution to secure the
democratic rights of the people. This article presents a platform based on modern technology blockchain that
provides maximum transparency and reliability of the system to build a trustful relationship between voters
and election authorities. The proposed platform provides a framework that can be implemented to conduct
voting activity digitally through blockchain without involving any physical polling stations. Our proposed
framework supports a scalable blockchain, by using flexible consensus algorithms. The Chain Security
Algorithm applied in the voting system makes the voting transaction more secure. Smart contracts provide a
secure connection between the user and the network while executing a transaction in the chain. The security
of the blockchain based voting system has also been discussed. Additionally, encryption of transactions using
cryptographic hash and prevention of attack 51% on the blockchain has also been elaborated. Furthermore,
the methodology for carrying out blockchain transactions during the process of voting has been elaborated
using Blockchain Finally, the performance evaluation of the proposed system shows that the system can be
implemented in a large-scale population.

INDEX TERMS E-polling, voting system, blockchain application, blockchain voting, E-voting, electoral
system, blockchain, cryptographic hash, secure voting.

I. INTRODUCTION a voting machine has been used which is connected to a

Blockchain can reduce a lot of efforts and resources invested centralized database. This machine can be tampered with by
in polling stations, specifying the areas, appointing staff, and a person who has physical access to it. It may cause single
preventing security risks at polling stations [1]. Holding a point of failure in the whole network of the voting system;
digital election through blockchain not only saves money but on the other hand, an immutable blockchain would not be
also reduces the risk of inequity in the voting process [2]. affected by an individual saboteur in the network [4]. In a
Modern technologies such as blockchain technology are very blockchain, the data is being stored in a decentralized man-
secure and beneficial if used carefully. It can make the voting ner, which is constantly verified if the records are accurate.
system more transparent, reliable, and also enhance traceabil- Therefore, in case of a malicious attack on a node, only
ity of transactions [3]. In a traditional digital voting system, that node would be affected and peer to peer network still
provide all services. It makes blockchain technology a threat-
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and proof and reliable system to be used as a private ledger in
approving it for publication was Genoveffa Tortora . the voting system. Blockchain has offered a level of security

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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and trust more than the previously used technologies [5].

The resources can be saved by hiring less staff, security
forces, and arranging polling stations for a traditional voting
system can be given to the miners [6]. It does not require a
physical module/voting machine which always has a chance
of cyber-attack through tampering devices [1]. The most
ambient part of this system is the transparency which make
people guarantee that their votes are being used in the right
means. Blockchain technology is more secure and transparent
than any other database. It is being considered to be applied in
critical systems like banking, medical fields, food safety and
cryptocurrency exchange [6]. Therefore, using blockchain
technology in the voting system assures that it will be more
trustable, secure and consistent as compare to other digital
voting systems. Blockchain technology can carry out a trans-
parent voting process while maintaining voter privacy and
trust.
In the traditional voting system, a voter first registers his
voting status by sending an SMS to Identification Authorities
(IA) [7]. IA verifies the voter and enlists his vote in the FIGURE 1. Traditional voting system.
specified polling station. The voter goes to the polling station
physically to cast the vote. Votes are then collected by the
appointed staff at polling stations [8]. Staff is responsible for
counting the votes and reporting them to higher authorities. tallying computation is reduced because the data is computed
This involvement of staff in the voting system increases the on the fly, every node computes the data separately which
chances of human errors [3]. The authorities again make sure is then stored as one. Voter verification is made possible
that the count is correct and then publish the result. This through online verification with the assistance of Identifying
whole system has a lot of loopholes where tampering with Authorities. The concept of using blockchain in the voting
votes is possible [9]. Either the staff can tamper with the system is offered to eliminate the vote tempering and the
votes or add fake votes while counting them. The authorities casting of ghost votes. Each ID can be used to cast vote once.
can announce wrong results of their own choice, under the By implementing the blockchain, the integrity of the votes
influence of a third party [10]. There is no surety given to stored on the system gets secured. Blockchain blocks any
the voter that proves that his vote is being considered or not. illegal breach to the system that tries to equip any role in the
The whole traditional voting system offers no transparency chain. It eliminates the dependency on middlemen in the vot-
or guarantee of fair voting. The situation cannot be resolved ing system which helps to save resources and prevent human
by only digitalizing the system or by casting votes through errors. Initially, the blockchain-based Voting Management
digital voting machines [11]. These digital voting machines System(VMS) will be implemented along with the manual
can be tampered with by hackers; which disrupts the vot- traditional voting system, to ensure its validity. When VMS
ing process [12]. Hence, a decentralized system is required will show promising results, then the whole voting activity
which can keep the data secure, even if a single node gets could be transferred to VMS only. A pilot implementation can
corrupt. The problems discussed above highlight the lack of be carried out in small elections of an area before large-scale
transparency in traditional and digital voting systems [13]. implementation.
The authorized organization gets blamed frequently for any The rest of the article is structured as follows: the
human error or lack of system efficiency, even if they try related work has been presented in Section II, and the pro-
to conduct fair voting in-country [7]. The Fig. 1 shows the posed framework has been discussed in Section III, while
traditional voting system implemented in most countries. Section IV focuses on the implementation and evaluation of
The main focus of this manuscript is to discourage any the proposed framework. Finally, the article has been con-
illegal tampering in the voting system to gain the trust of cluded in Section V.
voters by proposing a blockchain-based voting system. One
of the core features of blockchain technology is that if a node II. RELATED WORK
is added to the chain it can never be erased. It is possible due G. Rathee et al. [14] introduced a digital voting system based
to decentralized data storage in blockchain technology. The on blockchain that could be implemented in a technologically
data is stored on multiple nodes in the chain and the data is advanced environment. The system assumed that all the con-
copied on every single node of the network, which makes nected external entities are trustworthy. However, the security
it impossible to erase it from every node simultaneously. flaws in the system could be a huge risk, as intruders can enter
It assures the reliability of the voting system. Moreover, the the system to rig the votes. Whereas in our proposed voting

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system, the use of encryption and secure networks minimize TABLE 1. Comparison of current systems with proposed.
the risk of intruders barging into the votes.
M. Pawlak et al. [15], proposed a system that does not
require any operating entities. However, it could not secure
a voter’s identity, and also required complex computing. The
system was able to collect votes from users but due to com-
plex computation, upon higher user rate the latency became
an issue. The identities of the voters became vulnerable. The
system could not compute a large amount of data hence it
has failed to be implemented at a large scale. Whereas in our
proposed voting system the latency is managed by flexible
use of consensus algorithms. The use of cryptographic hash
in blockchain omits the risk of the vulnerability of a voter’s
identity.
A proposed system by D. Chaum et al. [16] improved
the robustness and fair tallying of votes. End-to-end veri-
fication was made possible for voters to assure their count proposed system besides implementing blockchain is to
of the vote is integrated. Each voter was able to view if his assure security, transparency, and integrity of results in a
vote was considered and recorded correctly. The voters were voting system that empowers the trust of voters. This arti-
given a unique code that they could enter into the system cle proposes a more efficient and better implementation of
to verify their vote. Whereas in our proposed voting system blockchain in digital as well as a traditional voting system
the verification of votes has been further simplified. Voters that is already being used. It gives higher authorities more
can verify their votes through registered phone numbers and detailed insight into the system while keeping it decentralized
email addresses. Verification of votes after the voting activity and transparent for every voter.
builds up the trust of voters.
The voting system without polling stations was discussed III. PROPOSED FRAMEWORK OF VOTING SYSTEM
by P. Mccorry et al. [17]. He suggested that voting through Blockchain is mutable, unlike other programming structures
the internet using blockchain can give good results if imple- where an admin can add, delete or update the data. If such
mented correctly. They discussed some technical flaws in a system is used for voting, then anyone having access
digital voting systems. The robustness of the system could can tamper with the system and update or delete the votes.
not be controlled. The error of doubling users gets minimal by This is not the case with blockchain technology. Once a
using end-to-end verification. These voting systems had low node is added to the chain, it cannot be deleted or updated
latency and did not secure the privacy of voters. This latency under any condition. If a node is attacked by an intruder,
in the system is controlled by using a flexible consensus the corresponding nodes detects it and rebuild the damaged
algorithm and smart contracts in the blockchain voting system node, hence the chain becomes immutable. The blockchain
being proposed. is decentralized which makes the voting system independent
The Table 1 shows a detailed comparison of our proposed of any single computing node. The voting activity remains
VMS with other voting systems based on blockchain tech- operational even if any one or more nodes get attacked or
nology. The state-of-the-art blockchain voting system was become unavailable. It assures reliability under any severe
based on a single fixed consensus algorithm however our condition. The main stakeholders of the proposed framework
proposed system supports a flexible consensus algorithm at are voters, Identification Authorities (IA), and Administra-
run time that helps to control the performance of the voting tion Authority (AA) of election commission.
activity. We have also proposed a solution for the prevention
of the 51% attack to prevent malicious activities during the A. VOTING SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
voting process. Our system has further proposed the Chain In Fig. 2 a high-level architecture of the proposed system has
Security Algorithm which automatically verifies the validity been presented. It shows how the main stakeholders; Voters,
of the chain each time a new block is added to it or some VMS, AA, and IA work together to perform certain voting
unauthorized change occurs in block data. We have also pro- tasks. All voters are connected to VMS directly through
posed a mechanism of Unspent Transaction Output(UTXO) dAPP; it is either a mobile application or a web portal. The
and Smart Contracts that allow the system to prevent any identification authority verifies voters registering in the sys-
incomplete and malicious transaction in the blockchain. tem. Any voter who is verified and eligible to vote is allowed
The above discussion shows that there has been a lot of in the application to take part in voting.
debate about making a secure, efficient, and transparent vot- The process of the whole system includes certain parts;
ing system in past but any comprehensive solution or system the first one is the user interface of the application, which
has not been proposed that could fulfill all requirements also requires front-end security. It is critical because the user
and key purposes of the voting system. The novelty of the enters his credentials on that interface, so it should be secure

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Voters must have access to any smartphone or web browser

to take part in voting. The voter’s interface would be provided
in multi-languages to make it easy to use for all users. The
proposed system can contain a large number of voters at the
time of voting. A decentralized blockchain system enables
a voter to vote from any part of the world. A person can
take part in voting from anywhere, even if he is in a foreign
country, in this way his/her computerized National ID is
verified from the national database so he can cast the vote.
Voting transactions are sent to a pool from which miners
analyze them and remove the malicious request by taking the
consensus from the other nodes before adding it to the chain.
The votes are fully secured using a cryptographic hash. Each
vote cast adds a new block in the chain. System also make
sure that only one vote can be cast by one user by using the
vote coin. Even if due to some technical fault, the balance of
the voting coin does not get updated, hence system ensures
FIGURE 2. Voting system architecture. that no double votes have casted by a voter. By checking
whether a transaction hash is generated against voter com-
puterized National ID or not, if any node or request of a
and simple. The system provides full and fair access to every voter is malicious then miner automatically rejects it. When
user during voting activity. It also provides traceability after the transaction completes and a node is successfully added
casting of vote. The voter registers in the system by his cre- to Vote Chain, the voter of that particular voting transaction
dentials. VMS uses the ID details of voters and verifies them is notified through an SMS to his registered phone-no and
with online records of IA to register the voter in the system. email. The voter has provided with a unique transaction hash
The user receives a unique OTP to log in to the system. by which he can verify his vote through a web portal and
An OTP is generated each time the voter wants to login into upon successfully completion of transaction the vote has been
VMS. All the detail of the voter is saved in VMS. After counted in the whole voting activity. The voter wallet has then
successfully registering in the system, One Voting Coin (VC) contained zero vote coins, when a voter successfully casts the
is added to the wallet of each voter. To prevent voters from vote.
voting twice, each voter is given only one VC.
C. LAYERED STRUCTURE OF THE PROPOSED VMS
B. WORKFLOW OF PROPOSED MODEL The proposed framework has ben presented in a layered struc-
The voter after completing the verification is registered into ture. System services have been bifurcated the process into
the Voting Management System. A single chain system is five layers, it has the following layers presented as shown in
implemented on the blockchain. The national database of Fig. 3. The interface layer contains all the dAAPs developed
the country is also integrated with the system to keep the for voters and administration. These are the distribute APPs
voter’s voting integrity. For every vote, a transaction is being through which any stakeholder can connect to VMS. The goal
generated against the voter’s National ID. The transaction is of this layer is to provide an interface for interacting with the
then mined by the minors and saved in the blockchain. When system.
the voter casts the vote, his Vote Coin in his/her wallet is Application Layer provides a user verification system by
also being utilized. The voter cannot cast another vote after involving external sources. It is the front-end interface of the
one vote coin is utilized. As the voter will sign-in through whole voting system. It encapsulates the data of the voting
his/her credentials then the voter has been redirected to the system in online databases. All the blockchain transactions
election interface where all the candidates who are contesting are also handled in this layer. The user is verified by his/her
in his constituency are shown to the voter. Upon the voter’s National ID, that was eligible to take part in this voting
request to cast vote, VMS verifies the voting status of the activity.
voter from the blockchain by checking all transactions hash The Trust layer is the most important part of the whole
that already exists against his/her computerized National ID. framework. It ensures consensus is made correctly and the
If a transaction hash is found against the voter’s computerized data is transferred securely through smart contracts. It verifies
National ID then VMS declined the request and logout the every new block added to the chain.
voter from the system. If a voter has not voted yet, the request The basic information related to the blockchain is stored
is transferred to the miner to add the node. The voter selects in the blockchain layer; it keeps track of any faulty node in
the desired candidate and casts his vote. The transaction is the chain to ensure the immutability of the chain. All the
monitored with the help of a transaction hash and carried out public and private keys, and transaction data are stored in this
by the miner. The node is then added to the chain for balloting. layer.

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in Voting such as Ripple, Proof of Vote, Proof of Trust, and

Proof of Stake. Here, Proof of Stake tells the computing
power required to the system by validating random nodes.
If a node is validating a false transaction, then it immediately
loses its stake in the voting chain. The transaction from such
nodes is not accepted.

IV. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

The process of voting is run by maintaining our system that
is backed up by the blockchain. The hashes of transaction for
every voter has stored on the chain and all the results of the
election are also stored on the blockchain and from there the
result of the election can be viewed on the resulting dashboard
of the users. The system first verifies whether the voter is the
country nationality holder and it also checks whether the voter
has already voted or not if he still has a vote coin, the system
allows him to cast vote. After verifying the voting details i.e.
voter identifier, vote, and timestamp was stored in the chain
which saves vote details. The whole process is elaborated
in Fig. 4.

FIGURE 3. Layered structure of the framework.

The transaction layer encompasses all the transactions that

are made by using smart contracts between VMS and voters.
Mining of all the transactions takes place in the transaction
layer.
The most critical layer is the security layer by which
the blockchain is protected from any attack. Any attempt
of attack is defended by using algorithms and basic rules
that make it difficult for external entities to harm the chain.
The security protocols are implemented on the entire chain.
The private and public keys make data encrypted and secure
throughout the system.
FIGURE 4. Smart contract used in the proposed VMS.
D. FLEXIBLE CONSENSUS ALGORITHM
The proposed framework supports scalable blockchain. The
system provides the support of plug-and-play consensus algo- A. dAPP SETUP
rithms. By default, the Proof of Work consensus (PoW) Voting Management System consists of different compo-
algorithm has been proposed to keep the blockchain efficient nents discussed in this section. It has a user interface for
throughout the voting activity, but the framework also sup- secure interaction of voters with the system, which also
ports other available consensus algorithms that can be chosen includes front-end security. A dAPP interface has been imple-
at the deployment time of the blockchain. Proof of Work mented front end of the VMS. The dAPP is a decentralized
states that a certain amount of computational power has been application based on blockchain technology. It runs on a
spent on a transaction. The framework is flexible enough to P2P blockchain network. The user identification is critical
incorporate the change in consensus algorithms at run time. because the user enters his/her credentials on that interface,
It not only helps to keep the blockchain secure but also keeps so it should be tamper-free and simple. The system provides
the voting activity undisrupted. full fair access to every voter and provides traceability after
Choosing a suitable consensus algorithm at deployment casting the vote. The voter login the system by his/her cre-
time helps the blockchain to give maximum performance at dentials. System uses the ID details of the user and verify
run time. Different consensus algorithms can be implemented them with the Database to register the user in the system.

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The user gets a unique OTP to log in to the system. The

OTP has generated each time the voter login into VMS. The
purpose of using the dAPP system is to ensure the reliability
of VMS; as decentralization makes processing efficient at all
nodes. If one node of the system during the voting system
gets vulnerable, all the other nodes are not harmed. The node
which gets vulnerable is reinstate by other nodes.

B. UNIQUENESS OF VOTERS
The uniqueness of users can be established by using their
computerized National ID. When voters enter their details,
those are then verified with the assistance of identifying
authorities. This makes sure that a person’s identity is not
being used by another voter. By taking credentials, the author-
ities verify, if the person is eligible to cast a vote in the
FIGURE 5. Smart contract casting vote in VMS.
election or not and whether any transaction hash has already
been assigned to his/her National ID. If voter is eligible, the
system registers the voter and one Voting Coin is awarded TABLE 2. Transaction in VMS.
to every voter wallet. Verifying the user by this method also
enables the system to judge user either fulfills the require-
ments imposed by the law and cast the vote. When the voter
casts the vote, a transaction hash is assigned against the
National ID of the voter. Furthermore, the wallet balance of
voters is also updated to zero voting coin, which eliminates
the possibility of doubling a vote from the same user. When a
voter casts a vote, the blockchain updates and saves the vote
of the voter, which means that the user is not be able to cast
a vote again unless a new VC is issued.

C. ELECTION AS A SMART CONTRACT

Smart contracts are providing a secure connection between
the user and the network while executing a transaction in the
chain. These are the rules that are implemented on the entire
blockchain and cannot be neglected under any condition. All
the nodes have to follow the smart contracts to save the vote
in the system successfully.
The first smart contract is for user verification between
IA and the VMS; it uses the Can-Cast-Vote function which instructions for voting. Either the ID would be wrong or the
checks the requirements of the system to make sure the user is not eligible to cast vote due to any legal reason. Each
specified voter can vote. After verification, it enters the voter voter has a wallet given by the authorities which contains only
details record for further use. The voter is being connected one Voting Coin. After a successful transaction, the wallet
with a voting smart contract that specifies which candidates is reduced by one and goes empty. It assures that voter is
would be shown to him/her. If the consensus between the not being able to vote again. The transaction on the chain is
node and chain agrees then voting is allowed. The smart shown in Table 2. Here the TX Hash is the transaction ID of
contact to cast vote in the system is defined in Fig. 5. It checks a particular transaction, the block in which the transaction is
the Vote Coin in the wallet of the voter, whether he/she has being performed is under the Block column; it is where the
eligibility tocast vote or not. A function Cast vote is defined transaction is sent. The value of the transaction is the infor-
which takes voters’ National ID and the wallet address as mation; to whom the vote was cast. For example, ‘‘Candidate
input and checks if the user voting coin is available. If the A and E’’ is voted in the first transaction in Block 101. In the
voter has a voting coin then the smart contract allows them to case of voting for multiple candidates in an election activity,
cast vote otherwise it has rejected the vote request. the data value stores information about both candidates. The
Every vote is stored in the transaction as shown in Table 2 voter is still given only one vote coin. The voter selects the
and each voter gets a Transaction ID for his/her vote. All the desired candidates and uses the vote coin once, which saves
information is stored in the transaction is highly encrypted by information of multiple candidates in that block.
using the cryptographic hash. If the consensus does not match The function proceeds in case of candidate’s address is not
the voter is preceded to a new screen to help him get the right null, otherwise VMS shows an error and asks to re-select

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the candidate. By applying this check in smart contract, any

unnecessary transaction does not carry out on the blocks of
our chain, which contains voting details. However, no incom-
plete transaction is carried out by smart contract. The transac-
tion is sent to memPool only if all the conditions come true.
A memPool is a replicated staging area where every node
temporarily keeps the unconfirmed new transactions. After
pushing the transaction to memPool the voter is notified via
his registered phone number. The miner mines the block of
transaction into the blockchain. The system supports permis-
sioned blockchain and if due to any reason the transaction is
not added to the blockchain, it has rolled backed to memPool
and waiting again for mining process. System guarantees
to commit every transaction from memPool without voter
interaction. The system allows the miner to mine this rolled-
back transaction.
In Fig. 6, a smart contract while registering a new user
into the system is presented. This smart contract has to
make sure that a voter never registered in the voting system
twice. For each new registration request, the system verifies
through smart contract that specific voter should not already
exist in chain. If a National ID does not exist, the system
registers the new voter in the system and adds one voting
coin (VC) in his wallet. This smart contract also verifies the
age of the user in another check so it would not populate the
FIGURE 7. Chain security algorithm.
chain with excessive useless registration. The age is verified
with the assistance of Identification Authorities through his
National ID.

FIGURE 6. Smart contract registering in VMS.

The Chain Security Algorithm in Fig. 7 automatically

FIGURE 8. Chain recovery during partial failure of the network
validates the chain, each time a new block is added. It verifies (a): Node 2 is disconnected from network, while Node 1 is mining
the block to be secure and valid before replicating it to all normally. (b) Node 2 joins network and replicate the blocks from Node 1,
the peers in the network. The algorithm compares the hash as the Node 1 is the longest chain in network.

values of the new and previous blocks. If the chain is valid

then Chain Security Algorithm allows it to replicate on all In case of any technical failure, such as internet breakdown
nodes in peer to peer network. In case of malicious activity or power shutdown in an area. The system manages partial
was detected by the algorithm, it declares the chain invalid failure of the network as shown in Fig. 8. The affected Node 2
and also informs all peers on network. This algorithm assures is unable to continue the mining process due disconnection
the security of the blockchain. from network and during disconnection all other connected

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nodes keep mining the blocks as shown in Fig. 8 a). When block and locked using the public key of the voter. While
the affected Node 2 is connected again with the network, tracking the vote, the node is identified by the voter’s public
the longer chain wins as per blockchain rule i.e. Node 1 is key. The voter uses his private key to view the transaction
considered the valid chain and replicated on the affected made by his wallet. Voters can only view the vote; they can
Node 2. never change or delete the vote once it is cast. Any user
information being transferred in a transaction is encrypted by
D. TRANSACTIONS IN VMS (UTXO) cryptography. The process of casting vote in VMS is further
This section explains the concept of Unspend Transaction elaborated in Fig. 10. It shows that while casting vote the
Outputs (UTXO) in the proposed system. As discussed in voter adds a digital signature to the transaction. This digital
Section IV part c, each voter is given one VC in his wallet signature keeps the transaction secure.
at the time of registering. Voters can spend it only once
while voting for candidates. Voting transactions in VMS are
performed using the UTXO mechanism. In Fig. 9 there are
several transactions by different voters to candidates. While
performing each transaction 1 VC is spent. Miner gets this VC
as a reward. There is no transaction fee in the voting system as
system keep the rights of all voters equal. Voter1 spends 1 VC
to cast the vote for Candidate2. This transaction is recorded
and forwarded to the memPool of transactions. From there,
miners pick up multiple transactions and start to mine. Here
the value of UTXO after each transaction is updated to zero,
ensuring that a voter cannot vote again.

FIGURE 9. Transaction in VMS. (UTXO.) FIGURE 10. Process of transaction.

E. CRYPTOGRAPHIC HASH A miner in blockchain can only change the nonce value of
Cryptographic hash keeps the data hidden from any intruder the transaction, as all the data is encrypted by using a hash.
in the system; it has multiple benefits that include the privacy Fig. 11 shows an example of a block added to the chain in
of the user’s identity. Cryptographic hash uses encryption VMS. All the voting transactions are placed in chain. The
to keep the transaction secure when it is transmitted on the nonce value is the one that the miner can change, to mine
network to be added to a node, only the authorized owner the block in the chain. All other values are not editable by a
of the transaction can decrypt the transaction and view the miner. Fig. 11 elaborates the block data in detail but in a real
content using his private key. The tracking of the user’s vote block, this data is stored in the form of hexadecimal. The hash
is made possible by providing the voter with the address value is the tracking address of this block given to the voter to
of his transaction; as soon as the vote is cast the voter is verify his vote. Miner tries to reach the golden nonce in order
notified through SMS and email. Voters can track their vote to add the block in chain.
in blockchain through the hash value of the transaction that Integrity and confidentiality are key features of blockchain
is provided on the registered phone number. The voting data technology. The system uses signatures to lock and unlock the
includes all the information saved while casting the vote. The messages in the blockchain. Hence, only the voter is authenti-
data remains secured, unharmed, and hidden. The only person cated to view the message. The private key and message of the
with the tracking information is the voter, who can view and user create a signature. A function called signing algorithm
verify his voting information. The transaction is saved in a takes the private key and Vote (message) of the voter to create

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voters, qualified candidates, and election statistics. A flaw of

the system can be the low literacy rate of any country, but it
can be resolved by providing guidelines through media and
by keeping the interface as simple as possible. The system
also defines multi-language interface that can easily be used
by native language voters. The voting system is secured and
the only risk is 51% monopoly of hash rate by a miner or
group of miners of the voting system.

G. PREVENTING ATTACK 51%

The 51% attack means monopolizing the 51% hash rate of
the blockchain. To achieve such a level of hash rate very
high computational power is required. In VMS 51% of attack
is prevented by two solutions. Firstly, the hash rate of each
miner is pre-recorded in the system. Hash rates are monitored
to check if any miner does not equip a 51% hash rate in
FIGURE 11. A block in VMS. a blockchain system. If such a user is detected, he is not
allowed to mine during the voting process. Secondly, miners
are pre-selected for the voting process. Miners are hired to
a signature of that voter. The signature along with the message mine during the voting process, under the supervision of
and public key of the voter is stored in the vote chain as shown authorities. Any external group of miners is not0 allowed dur-
in Fig. 12. ing voting as elaborated in Fig. 13. The system is being moni-
tored constantly while voting activity, the network blocks any
malicious miner to mine block in the chain. If pre-selected
miners leave the mem-pool while voting activity, the system
detects the activity and does not allow those miners to re-join
the chain. To keep it fully secure and tamper-proof, if any
malicious activity occurs or a miner tries to add a false block
in the chain that is not verified, a 51% attack is declared and
the process of mining activity is stopped. Nodes with larger
chains win and monopolize the network. The blockchain
is permissioned and nodes cannot join the network without
the permission of the Election Authority. At the run time a
group of malicious nodes cannot join without verification of
credentials and permission. Hence in proposed solution 51%
attack is not possible.

FIGURE 12. Signature.

F. CHAIN DEPLOYMENT
This section elaborates the chain deployment. The voter casts
the vote in the system, the voting transaction is mined into
the blockchain. Each successful transaction in the blockchain
is notified to the voter via registered phone number. The
voter can verify his vote by using the hash value of the
transaction. As this method of changing the status of vote FIGURE 13. Prevention of 51% attack in VMS.
transactions on chain overcomes the issue of the partial pro-
cess transactions, the chain only computes the voting result V. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
by processing the successful transactions, as only those votes This part contains the performance evaluation of the proposed
are counted. The delay of 10 minutes has been decided to framework; data is taken with real-life scenarios using Remix
tackle the transactions load on blockchain. After voting the a browser-based Blockchain tool. Solidity is used as the
election authorities can view the votes result on the dashboard programming language in the experimentation of the pro-
of the VMS. The dashboard shows the details of registered posed model.

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 M. S. Farooq et al.: Framework to Make Voting System Transparent Using Blockchain Technology

A. RESPONSE TIME OF VMS

The response time of VMS can be determined by calculating
the time taken to execute each transaction in the blockchain.
Fig. 14 shows the response time of the system. It shows
the increase in response time of the VMS as the votes are
increased. The blockchain is decentralized hence each node
responds according to its commuting power.

FIGURE 15. Behavior of size of chain.

TABLE 3. Latency in VMS.

FIGURE 14. Response time of VMS.

The increasing number of votes in the system shows a

uniform increment in the size of the blockchain. Response
time is increased gradually as more nodes are waiting in
the memPool of miners. Flexible Consensus algorithms are
applied here to keep the efficiency of the chain uniform.
the voting process. Latency in the chain depends on the
B. SIZE OF CHAIN computing power of nodes; flexible consensus algorithms
The chain size is around 0.004MB to 0.2MB for every 500 keep the blockchain efficient throughout the voting activity.
Blocks. The size keeps on increasing with the addition of The transaction inclusion time in the blockchain is fixed,
Blocks in the chain. In Fig. 15 uniform increment in the size it reduces the system’s latency.
of the chain is shown as the blocks are being added over time.
The chain consists of zero blocks at initially, but eventually, VI. CONCLUSION
it increases in size because the process of voting is usually 1-2 The purpose of proposing a blockchain-based solution for
days. Hence latency can be an issue for a very readily growing the voting system was to build trust between government
chain. The size of the chain increases slowly when the voting and voters to make-believe that their voting integrity is kept
process starts; after the intense voter traffic of transactions safe. The blockchain-based voting is also make the voting
in memPool the voters start to mine the transactions in the process transparent and trustworthy. The amount of money
blockchain, once the mining process starts, the size of the spent on voting activity in any country is very high for
chain increases gradually. After successfully mining all votes the traditional voting system, whereas the proposed solution
in blockchain the tallying process starts. for using the blockchain voting systems to make the voting
process cheaper, faster and trustworthy. It helps to enhance
C. LATENCY people’s relations with their democratic state, as they get a
The latency of the system is analyzed by measuring the transparent system on which they can rely and trust. The
time taken to execute the transaction request. The transaction framework elaborates on the feature, services and role of
request is triggered at a respected time that gives the latency official authorities using blockchain in the voting system
rate of the system. As shown in Table 3 It may increase by an which is highly in need to improve the level of the electoral
increase in number. of requests per second. Tallying of votes system and its reliability, traceability and trust. The verifica-
is being held on different nodes of the system during the vot- tion of each vote makes it immutable. The use of hash assures
ing process, it makes it very efficient and reduces any further the privacy of voters and the concept of public and private
processing at a singular node. Intruder nodes are blocked by keys allows the authorities to control the process precisely.
using smart contract algorithms, these algorithms don’t allow The traceability of the voting system assists in preventing
any incomplete transaction to hit the blockchain. The voter hackers from modifying or viewing the voting information.
is only allowed to vote when all the relevant smart contracts It assures that one voter only votes one vote. The usability
are fulfilled. Hence, the traffic on-chain is controlled during of this system performs well by using the more effective

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M. S. Farooq et al.: Framework to Make Voting System Transparent Using Blockchain Technology

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