It is pleasure to be part of this community.
I am doing University project, which is aiming to use blockchain technology to host and store voting event and then evaluate the security and performance. The plan I am thinking of is to get Ethereum source code and run it on virtual machines then create an application to act as an user which is trying to vote. I have some basic coding knowledge but can you guys give me some information of where to start, which tools to use, is it possible at all?