NEXTGEN: College Voting System

The escalating demand for transparent, tamper-proof, and efficient electoral processes in educational institutions necessitates a modern digital alternative to conventional paper-based voting. This paper presents NEXTGEN: College Voting System, a secure, fully web-based election management platform designed specifically for college-level institutional elections. The system is architected on a three-tier client-server model employing Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP) for backend processing, HTML5/CSS3 with Bootstrap 5 for the frontend, MySQL 8.0+ as the relational database engine, Apache Tomcat 11 as the servlet container, and the Jakarta Mail API for OTP-based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). The platform features two primary role-based modules: an Admin Module offering complete election lifecycle control including student registration management, candidate management, election activation/deactivation/reset, and real-time result monitoring; and a Student Module providing secure registration, OTP-verified login, position-wise vote casting, and OTP-based password recovery. Security is enforced through SHA-256 password hashing, session management, role-based access control, dual-layer duplicate vote prevention (application-layer logic and database UNIQUE constraints), and time-bound OTP verification (5-minute validity). Testing validated 100% vote-count accuracy, 100% duplicate vote rejection, and OTP delivery within 5–10 seconds. The system eliminates manual counting errors, drastically reduces administrative overhead, and enables instant, verifiable election results. Future directions include biometric authentication, blockchain-based vote immutability, SMS-OTP support, and cloud deployment.