SafePoll: Digital Voting System

SafePoll is a secure digital voting system built with a Next.js frontend and an Express/MongoDB backend. It supports user authentication, election management, candidate uploads, and vote tracking for administrators and voters.

Features

• User registration and login with OAuth + JWT-based authentication
• Admin dashboard for creating and managing elections
• Voter dashboard for casting ballots and viewing results
• Candidate image uploads for election ballots
• REST API backend with Express and MongoDB
• Kubernetes manifests included for deployment

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Next.js, React, Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Node.js, Express, MongoDB, Mongoose
• Authentication: JSON Web Tokens
• Deployment: Docker, Kubernetes

Repository Structure

• backend/ – Express API server
• frontend/ – Next.js application
• k8s/ – Kubernetes deployment and service manifests

Local Setup

Backend

1. Open a terminal in backend/
2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Create a .env file with the following values:

   MONGODB_URI=<your-mongodb-connection-string>
   PORT=5000
   JWT_SECRET=<your-jwt-secret>
   SECRET_KEY=<your-secret-key>

4. Start the backend server:

   npm run dev

Frontend

1. Open a terminal in frontend/
2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Create a .env.local file with the following values:

   NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://localhost:5000

4. Start the Next.js app:

   npm run dev

The frontend should be available at http://localhost:3000 and the backend at http://localhost:5000 by default.

Deployment

Docker

Build and run each service individually:

docker build -t safepoll-backend ./backend
docker build -t safepoll-frontend ./frontend

docker run -p 5000:5000 safepoll-backend
docker run -p 3000:3000 safepoll-frontend

Kubernetes

Apply all manifests from the k8s/ directory:

kubectl apply -k k8s/

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If something breaks, it's probably MongoDB. IT'S ALWAYS MONGODB!!.