Research Articles Open Access

Blockchain Based Electronic Voting Framework for Enhancing Electoral Transparency, Security, and Efficiency in Zimbabwe

Marvellous Courage Tshuma , Edwin Farai Madzuwo , Tatenda Benjamin Manyuchi
Available online July 1, 2026
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Abstract

This research proposes a Blockchain voting system for Zimbabwe to solve the challenges of electoral auditability, voter eligibility, ballot secrecy, double voting, administrative control and usability of voting. Based on E-Voting and blockchain literature, requirements were extracted and then translated into a hybrid off-chain/on-chain architecture, using design science research. Ex ante assessment of the design was performed using requirements to design traceability and threat control residual risk analysis. The result is a separation of voter identities with voting units, the issuance of one voting credential per voter eligible to vote (VEV) and the use of smart contracts on a permissioned multi-stakeholder blockchain to enforce election-state and duplicate-vote rules. The identities and operations are off-chain, and election-critical state is recorded on a distributed ledger that is tamper-evident. The proposed interface also hides blockchain operations from the voters, meaning they don't have to know about MetaMask or cryptocurrencies. The analysis suggests that, when properly used, blockchain technology can enhance the audibility and strengthen the enforcement of rules, but it cannot provide guarantees of endpoint security, availability, coercion resistance and legal legitimacy or anonymity in isolation. The framework provides a context-specific architecture and a testable agenda for evaluation processes for future prototyping, security assessment, usability studies, scalability experiments, governance review, and legally-authorised pilot evaluation of the framework in Zimbabwe.

Keywords

blockchain electronic voting smart contracts electoral security zimbabwe

Introduction

Electronic voting is not only a software problem. It is a high-assurance socio-technical problem in which the technology must support eligibility, uniqueness of the vote, ballot secrecy, integrity, auditability, availability, and accountable administration at the same time. This combination is important because improving one property can weaken another. For example, stronger identity checks can improve eligibility control while creating privacy risks if identity information is linked too closely to the ballot. Similarly, a fully centralized system may simplify administration but can concentrate technical power in a small number of privileged operators. We therefore treat the central design problem as the distribution of trust rather than the simple digitization of a ballot.

We investigated blockchain because some of its properties are relevant to this trust-distribution problem. Cryptographically linked records, replicated state, consensus, and programmable smart contracts can support tamper-evident audit trails and consistent enforcement of election rules [1]-[3]. However, our review also showed that blockchain does not solve several of the most difficult electoral problems. It cannot decide who is legally eligible to vote, protect a compromised voter device, guarantee coercion resistance, or make an election legally valid. It can also preserve a badly designed identity-to-ballot linkage just as permanently as it preserves a valid state transition. For this reason, the framework does not treat blockchain as a complete voting system; it uses the ledger only where replicated, independently inspectable election state provides a clear design benefit.

A further reason for developing the framework was the weakness of the common assumption that one blockchain wallet can represent one voter. We reject that assumption because possession of a wallet does not establish citizenship, registration status, constituency, age, or any other legal qualification. A single person can also create many addresses. In our design, voting power therefore comes from an election-specific authorization issued after an authoritative eligibility check, not from ownership of a blockchain address. This decision brings together the legal definition of an eligible elector with the technical system, while avoiding the voter having their civil identity recorded on the ballot paper.

Zimbabwe is a suitable illustration within which to explore the design decisions as any legitimate electronic voting proposal would need to fit within existing electoral institutions, legal rules, infrastructure limitations and differential degrees of digital connectivity. What matters to us is not whether a blockchain application can actually record a vote, but whether the proposed architecture can be understood by ordinary people, clearly and audibly verified by trusted observers, and feasibly operated in a real-world setting where connectivity and backup capabilities are reasonable. Forcing voters to register and use a separate wallet, engage with seed phrases, deposit crypto, and comprehend transaction fees would put technical risk and tasks on the voter. We thus remove blockchain operations from the voter experience to provide greater abstraction.

Four related study questions are then presented: (1) What security and socio-technical requirements should a blockchain voting architecture for Zimbabwe address? (2) How should civil identity, operational information, and voting credentials be detached from one another, and how should smart-contract logic, voting information, and the state of the ledger be separated? (3) How can one-person-one-vote be ensured without associating a civil ID with a wallet ID? (4) What evidence would be necessary to warrant a controlled deployment? What is new and innovative about the proposed framework is its ability to intertwine these concerns into a single design but also to bring into plain sight the other assumptions required for the trust along with any risks that remain outside its scope.

The output of the present study is therefore a conceptual design artefact, not an implemented national voting system. No transaction benchmarks, reliability percentages, user-satisfaction results, or security guarantees are claimed.

Complete Article

The complete article, including all figures, tables, equations and algorithms, is available in the official publication PDF.

Conclusion

This study developed a blockchain-based electronic voting framework for Zimbabwe by starting from electoral requirements rather than from blockchain technology itself. The resulting design separates civil identity from ballot processing, derives voting rights from a single-use election credential rather than a wallet address, restricts smart-contract logic to election-critical rules, and distributes ledger responsibilities across multiple accountable stakeholders. The voter-facing design also removes the need for ordinary users to manage MetaMask, cryptocurrency, or blockchain keys.

Our analysis suggests that the strongest justification for using blockchain in this framework is not that it makes an election automatically secure, but that it can provide replicated, tamper-evident election state and consistent enforcement of selected rules across independently governed validators. The same analysis also identifies clear boundaries. Ballot secrecy, coercion resistance, endpoint security, availability, legal acceptability, public trust, and correct voter registration depend on controls outside the ledger. These limitations are central to the framework because overstating what blockchain can guarantee would weaken rather than strengthen the design.

The framework should therefore be treated as a testable design artefact. Before any real electoral use is considered, future work must demonstrate the credential protocol, test one-person-one-vote under adversarial conditions, audit the smart contracts, evaluate privacy and linkability, measure performance and recovery under realistic loads, assess usability and accessibility, and examine governance and legal requirements. Only evidence from these stages can show whether the additional complexity of a permissioned blockchain is justified for Zimbabwe. The contribution of this study is to make those design choices, trust assumptions, and evaluation requirements explicit.

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