TrustChain: A Blockchain-Enabled Verifiable Digital Voting Solution for Election Integrity

A distributed digital ledger called blockchain records transactions between multiple computers. This is the foundation of the technology that drives cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin [1]. Among the different blockchains are public, private, hybrid, and consortium. Every variety has unique characteristics and fulfills a range of purposes. Blockchain is a data storage technique that makes system modification, hacking, and cheating difficult or impossible. As previously mentioned, a blockchain is a computer network that keeps a distributed, duplicate digital record of every transaction [1, 2].

The first person (or it may have been a group) to come up with the concept of a blockchain was Satoshi Nakamoto, who brought Bitcoin to life in January 2009. Bitcoin's blockchain was intended to record transactions in an entirely transparent, decentralized form that could not be altered. The trust mechanism of security allowed everyone to believe one another and prevented fraud. Blockchain creates a chain of blocks, each with a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. The chain is maintained by one computer and verified by its peer over a network. It has no way to change the records of what it stores. Blockchain offers a secure, dispersed way to store or transmit information. It's perfect for apps such as digital cash and clever contracts. The prospect of blockchain-based electronic voting systems transforming the political process by solving security, transparency, and verifiability issues has attracted much attention. Much work has been done in this area, producing insightful analysis and practical ideas for addressing the many problems connected with electronic voting and sorting out a strategy to solve them. To lay the foundation for dependable e-voting systems, the importance of security and verifiability in blockchain-based e-voting was stressed [1]. They proposed improving the voting process's security and trustworthiness. A similar critical look was taken at a blockchain-based electronic voting system established in Moscow [2]. It is pointed out potential problems and made suggestions for improvement. Through a test project, it was demonstrated that blockchain technology could make electronic voting safe and immune from manipulation [3].

This section presents the technique suggested for creating and deploying the proposed blockchain-powered online voting platform. The process covers a few topics: design, developing user interfaces, security protocols, and choosing blockchain platforms.

Designing wireframes and developing user interfaces - Figma, a design tool renowned for its capacity to build precise wireframes, will be used to create wireframes, which serve as blueprints for constructing websites. The proposed project will create the user flow, arrange the parts in the right places, and visualize the website's structure thanks to Figma. The wireframes will be created according to user expectations and usability standards to ensure a user-friendly and intuitive interface.

Using the Telos platform over Ethereum gives it better security, decentralization, speed, and scalability. A Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism is used on Telos, unlike Ethereum's Proof of Work (PoW). It is not only more power efficient but also capable of higher throughput. Telos will keep the proposed voting system decentralized and easy to use but is designed to enhance its performance, scalability, and security in general. Aesthetic Interface and Ease of Use Goals for the voting system include increased security, ease of use, and an interface visual presentation. The system is concerned with enhancing voter convenience and participation, especially among traditionally disadvantaged groups. People will be shown how to vote through an appealing and user-friendly interface that gives clear directions of a person's level of technological prowess. With biometric and multi-factor authentication techniques, genuine elections will use identity verification. The methods ensure the individuality and authenticity of every voter, and a well-thought-out user interface is crucial in guiding voters through the verification process. Security steps: It is critical that cryptographic security protocols protect the voting process adequately and thoroughly enough so that testing and simulations can be done. The technology is designed to produce a traceable and verifiable digital path for voters, assuring the electoral process. The system employed in actual elections by independent auditors ought to be extraordinarily reliable and resistant to manipulation.

While retaining low transaction fees, Telos is also faster than Ethereum. Although Ethereum can perform 14 transactions per second (TPS), it has been known to crash under workloads of tens of thousands. Telos, on the other hand, supports up to 10,000 transactions every second. The EVM compatibility of Telos makes Ethereum bright contracts easy to deploy. Using a unique Proof of Capacity (PoC) consensus method to ensure that every transaction is on the block, Telos also rewards users with the storage of data, which means improved security and decentralization. On the other hand, Telos users are equivalent to the shareholders of a company. Without central headquarters, Telos is controlled and managed solely by its community members through a decentralized voting system, allowing only supporters to influence operational direction and design! These are excellent reasons developers and clients should switch from Ethereum to Telos: Transaction speed — Cost reduction — Because it is just like Ethereum's smart contracts. Table 2 helps in understanding Telos's features compared to similar and existing blockchain platforms.

These enhancements could make a blockchain-based electronic voting system more transparent, secure, and user-friendly while also heightening confidence in the honesty of the election results.

System Architecture Plan - The system architecture plan contains the entire system's architecture and how voting will be implemented. As can be seen from the diagram, this voting system has many vital inputs, processes, and outputs. The input includes election parameters, candidate details, and voter registration information, which are maintained securely in a database built on blockchain technology. Candidates register by submitting their details and election parameters, whereas voters register once they have given their personal information. Using a blockchain-based voting tool, votes are cast, and results are encrypted and stored in one database. After the election, the ballots are counted, results are announced, and the blockchain database is updated. The system's data transmission is orderly. All of the voter registration data, candidate details, and election settings are incorporated into the blockchain database to ensure the secrecy and transparency of the election. Once a vote has been cast, it is securely stored in the database, informing both the organizers of the election and members of the public of its outcome. By verifying voter registrations and providing a simple, reliable way to determine election results, this method builds the public's trust in democratic processes.

Figure 1 highlights the block diagram of the proposed research work.

Table 2. Comparison of telos with other blockchain platforms

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Figure 1. Flow diagram of the proposed methodology

To ensure that online ballots are secure and free of tampering, the new e-vote technology and blockchain technology are implemented.

Key Components User interface:

1. Voter Login: Voters enter their credentials on the website's interface. Vote Casting Voters utilize an easy and user-friendly interface to cast their votes.
2. Anonymity: The system protects the voter's identity, while vote matters remain confidential.
3. Blockchain: Votes are Transactions: Every vote is carried out as a transaction and added to the blockchain. Transaction Validation Once a vote comes in, the blockchain network will validate it before recording this transaction. Data That Can't Change After a transaction is on the blockchain, it is immutable. This means it cannot be altered or eradicated, providing the vote's authenticity can be trusted.

MongoDB (Backend):

1. Storage: To ensure candidate information, voter data without any accurate discernible personal details (i.e., anonymous voting), and even election statistics remain safe, the voting details are all kept in MongoDB's database.
2. Auditability: The election details may be easily called back for audit using the database without endangering data security or privacy.
3. Scalability: MongoDB can contain large quantities of data to handle significant elections and thus has been employed here to keep the system scalable. Details of candidacy and votes on blockchain:
4. Non-disclosure of Votes: To keep them confidential, each vote is encrypted before it's put onto the blockchain.
5. Election Data on Blockchain: Information about candidates and votes, including tallies where appropriate, is kept on the blockchain. And that makes democracy transparent anew—little as Sunshine.

Methodology:

1. Voter Register and Verification: Voters are registered and verified securely (biometric passwords, 2FA, etc.).
2. Cast Votes onto Blockchain: Once verified, the voter chooses their candidate to vote, and then a transaction on the blockchain is recorded for this vote. Finally, the transaction to register that vote on the blockchain is verified and added to the blockchain.
3. Data Security: Sensitive information such as votes and one's secure identification are encrypted, ensuring that even the user sending it is all private information.
4. Audit and Transparency: Because of the nature of the blockchain, oversight of the entire operation is easy, even in elections. The process can be calculated by external third parties or systematically analyzed to see whether any part has been distorted.
5. Security: Blockchain enables every vote to be authenticated; once inserted into the blockchain, it can never be changed again. The privacy of voters is further protected by encrypting data in transit.
6. Transparency and Trust: Blockchain makes the operations of the voting public so all can verify that a count was taken down correctly, even without ever visiting any poll site themselves.
7. Scalability: The system is built to handle many electors and contests, and if necessary, it can grow.
8. Auditability: A MongoDB backend and a blockchain provide excellent means for safely auditing elections so that results may be objectively judged even remotely.

This system combines the immutability and transparency of the blockchain with a front end. One can use back-end scalability; together, it offers secure and efficient e-voting services.

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Figure 2. Migrations smart contract

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Figure 3. Election smart contract

The smart contract (Figure 2) provided, "Migrations," is a utility contract used in the deployment process of Ethereum-based smart contracts, often with tools like Truffle running on them while deployed by a contract transaction. The contract keeps track of the number and location in each deployment of the contract migrations step, so any deployment step happens only once. Other Properties The contract gives the address responsible for creating and owning the contract. This role allows certain functions throughout the contract via a protective modifier. When the last_completed_migration variable is updated by this function and qualified by a protected modifier, this reflects that a particular migration has been completed. This avoids duplicate or erroneous migrations when the transactions involved in contract upgrades are posted and blow their precompile limit. In practice, this works as follows: When called, setLastCompletedMigration stores 'step_nr ' in century at spotstep_for (centuries); Elsewhere, since step_nr has been completed, "step_nr" ' in new century is preserved, which provides information about how many generations were sent before it indexed below either hint or correspondingly for wast lists. This avoids re-deploying or repeating the migration steps altogether by performing with external pure calls during the stage of business, prevents contract updates, and re-deployments reliance on placed code is more.

The election smart contract (Figure 3) writes a basic election system on the Ethereum blockchain. The agreement describes a Candidate structure, including fields such as ID, name, vote count, details, and election_id. It permits anyone wishing to stand for election to register as a candidate along with additional metadata. Candidates are stored in map candidates with IDs as keys; the number of candidates is indicated by the candidates count. Also included in the contract is a mapping voter, which makes sure each voter can only vote once so long as it has been set to true. The addCandidate function can add a candidate for the election, while the vote function allows users to vote for candidates through their numbers ID for the candidates by their ID. It ensures that only legitimate candidates will be voted by voters and prohibits double voting. When a vote is successful, after it has been cast and is final, an event called votedEvent is activated. According to it, off-chain applications can then track the election's progress in near-real time! Integrity, transparency, and immutability are the cornerstones of this simple blockchain-based election on the chain.