Design and Implementation of an Online Campus Opinion Poll System
Chapter One
Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of this project is to develop an online voting platform with a biometrics authentication for faculty of engineering, which will in turn help the faculty to conduct a free and fair election
using electronic machines and get a complete database records of voters in the faculty.
The objectives of this research are as follow:
(I) investigate and review existing voting techniques;
(ii) develop a dynamic voter registration system, incorporating the use of sound (audio) to enable the disabled as well as the abled to perform their civic rights efficiently;
(iii) Provide a robust architecture to handle large volume of voter’s data; and
(iv) Design and develop a secure i-Voting system operating on the Biometric platform using the fingerprint authentication mechanism.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Review of Voters Registration in NIGERIA
Currently, Nigeria operates an open secret ballot system. This system is open because elections are done in the open where prospective voters queue up in wait for their turn; the ballot paper is dropped after marking, in a transparent ballot box located in an open place. The secret nature of this system is that voters mark and fold their ballot papers in a cubicle where nobody is able to see what they have marked or who they have voted for. Elections in Nigeria are administered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
As of 2011 elections, Nigeria had about 120,000 polling units. Voter registration was done at any of the 8800 registration centers nationwide.
The election process in Nigeria starts with voter registration, where eligible voters (people from
eighteen and above) supply their information including biometric data at any registration center to
be stored in the INEC database. According to Institute Policy (2000), INEC began modernizing her information technology infrastructure by migrating from an outdated legacy voting system heavily dependent on inaccurate paper records and polling cards to the newer Electronic Voting System (EVS). Kuye et al (2013) write that the EVS includes in it, the Electronic Voter Register (EVR), which, by capturing the names of all eligible voters, eliminates duplication of voters and minimizes discrepancies in the electoral process. After the voter registration process, a plastic voter’s card is produced for every registered voter and subsequently issued to the voters before
Election Day. On Election Day, voters are required to first be accredited by presenting their voter’s card to an
electoral official who in-turn, checks that the voter’s name is on the register for the polling station where they have presented themselves for casting of vote. Once this is confirmed, the voter is accredited and issued with a ballot paper. They in-turn go to the voting cubicle where they mark there ballot paper by thumb printing on the space for the candidate and party of their choice. The marked ballot paper is then folded and dropped in the transparent ballot box. This completes the voting process.
2.2. Overview of the Proposed System (Electronic Voting)
According to Oostveen .A.M. and Bessdaar P.V. (2009), electronic voting system (also known as e voting) is an electronic system which uses electronic ballot that would allow voters to transmit their secure and secret voted ballot to election officials over the computer. Also Vote Here Inc (2002) defined an electronic voting (e-voting) system as one in which the election data is recorded, stored and processed primarily as digital information. Lastly, Qadah, G.Z. and Taha R. (2007) defined e-voting systems as systems that allow the eligible voter to cast their vote via a computer normally connected to internet or intranet from anywhere like home or office. The basic feature of electronic voting and an electronic voting system is that electorates are able to cast
their votes electronically with the use of computers in such a way that the ballots can be transmitted
electronically through a secure channel to a central collation center where the votes can be counted in real-time with ease, thereby eliminating the usual delays and challenges associated with handling manual voting and collation. There have also been distinctions between electronic voting (E-voting), which is voting on a machine in a fixed location and internet voting (I-voting), which is voting on the internet without people having to converge at a the polling station to be able to cast their votes. The later requires more security.
According to Dimitrios Zissis (2011), supervised e-voting machines are used by voters in all elections in Brazil and India, and also on a large scale in Venezuela and the United States.
He further writes that they have been used on a large scale in the Netherlands but recently have been decommissioned, due to public concern. Remote e-voting otherwise known as Internet Voting has gained popularity and has been used for government elections and referendums in the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland and Estonia.
The first countries to adopt widespread deployment of electronic voting in their general and state
elections were Brazil in 1998 and India in 1999. The Indian electronic voting system was not networked and lacked the capacity to transmit results to a central collation centre; it still solved a need by allowing quick counting of the votes which previously took the government days to achieve. On the other hand, Brazil’s Evoting system transmitted votes to the electoral center immediately. Dimitrios Zissis (2011), reports that since 1998, the Swiss government has actively pursued the implementation of electronic voting (e-voting), as Switzerland has a large number of elections performed on a yearly basis.
CHAPTER THREE
System Design, Analysis and Methodology
Introduction
The project is executed in following four distinct stages:
- Requirement engineering
- System design
- System development
- System implementation
Requirement Engineering In line with the gathering of requirements for the development of the mobile platform for the institution’s prospectus, the need for generating much information that may be required for the prospectus was not completely a burden as we already have a suitable provided platform already containing the information we need to include in the new platform. In addition to this, further study of end-user information was conducted from students, for producing functional requirement of the proposed system. As a result, user requirement of the proposed system was determined.
Architecture
The architecture of the system, shown in Fig. 1, is based upon the functionality provided to different users by the system.
CHAPTER FOUR
SYSTEM DESIGN, TESTING AND IMPLEMENTATION
Specifications of the New System
The new system was designed to capture data from the input device, process it and generate meaningful output on the output device. There are some specifications that are necessary for the design of the new system. They are input, output specification and database specification. The objective of the design includes:
Design an input format that will enable the user capture all the necessary
data for the purpose of voter’s registration. Structure a database system that will store all the information. Design a well formatted output that will present information to management in a meaningful format.
- Maintain a Database for voters registration
- Maintain a database for party registration
- Maintain a database for local governments and wards
- Setup criteria for qualifying one for registration
- Allow users to register for voting publish voters register
CHAPTER FIVE
RECOMMENDATION,SUMMARY ANDCONCLUSIONS
Recommendation
It suffices to say that for any meaningful computer based information management to be integrated into any organization, proper training and orientation has to be given to both staff and management. Proper training should be given to the data entry staff on how to handle the computer hardware especially during backup processes. In particular electronic storage media are usually sensitive to change in temperature or pressure and as such data, can be lost very easily. The staff should also be briefed on the need and advantage of the current system and how it will equally assist them in their various field of work.
They should also be informed of the cost of maintaining this new system so that they will handle it with all carefulness. Training materials should not be presented in an informal way but with procedures like policies and form etc., they should be circulated to the personnel. This will at the end, generate the staff appreciation and needed interest to operate the system.
Summary
At the end of this project work, I was able to design and develop a software that can successfully handle electronic voter’s registration system. In the process of the design, fist hand information on voter’s registration process was obtained from Electoral officials.
This work also will serve as an aid for people who wish to research more on this topic. Other benefits are:
- Provision of facility for handling text electronically using powerful and sophisticated word processors to produce elegant and error free documents.
- In addition to storing the data, direct data capture was implemented. The systematic approaches used during each phase of the software development provides a clear insight that would be of immense help to anyone carrying out research works in this area.
Conclusions
Our proposal enables a voter to cast his/her vote through internet without going to voting booth and additionally registering himself/herself for voting in advance, proxy vote or double voting is not possible, fast to access, highly secure, easy to maintain all information of voting, highly efficient and flexible. Hence, by this voting percentage will increase drastically. The using of online voting has the capability to reduce or remove unwanted human errors. In addition to its reliability, online voting can handle multiple modalities, and provide better scalability for large elections. Online voting is also an excellent mechanism that does not require geographical proximity of the voters.
For example, soldiers abroad can participate in elections by voting online.
References
- Ankit Anand1 , Pallavi Divya2 ,“An Efficient Online Voting System”, Vol. 2,Issue.4, July-Aug. 2012, pp-2631-2634.
- Alaguvel.R1, Gnanavel.G2, Jagadhambal.K3,“Biometrics Using Electronic Voting System With Embedded Security”, Vol. 2,Issue.3,March 2013.
- Firas I. Hazzaa1,Seifedine Kadry2,Oussama Kassem Zein3, “Web-Based Voting System Using Fingerprint:Design And Implementation”, Vol. 2, Issue.4,Dec 2012.
- Malwade Nikita1, Patil Chetan2, Chavan Suruchi3, Prof.Raut S. Y4, “Secure Online Voting System Proposed By Biometrics And Steganography”, Vol. 3, Issue 5,