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DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM IN SUG ELECTIONS

Dept: COMPUTER SCIENCE File: Word(doc) Chapters: 1-5 Views:

Abstract

This system has been developed to simplify the process of organizing elections and make it convenient for voters to vote remotely from their home computers while taking into consideration security, anonymity and providing auditioning capabilities. On-line Voting System is a web based system that facilitates the running of elections and surveys online. It deals with design, build and test of online voting system that facilitates user (the person who is eligible for voting), candidate (Candidate are the users who are going to stand in elections for their respective party or posts), Election Commission Officer (Election Commission Officer who will verify whether registered user and candidates are authentic or not) to participate in online voting. This online voting system is highly secured, and it’s design is very simple, ease of use and also reliable. The proposed software is developed and tested to work on Ethernet and allows online voting if provided in web version. It also creates

1.0   INTRODUCTION

 

Voting schemes have evolved from counting hands in early days to systems that include paper, punch card, mechanical lever and optical-scan machines. Electronic voting systems provide some characteristic different from the traditional voting technique, and also it provides improved features of voting system over traditional voting system such as accuracy, convenience, flexibility, privacy, verifiability and mobility. But it suffers from various drawbacks such as Time consuming , Consumes large volume of pare work , No direct role for the higher officials, Damage of machines due to lack of attention, Mass update doesn’t allows users to update and edit many item simultaneously. These drawbacks are overcome by Online Voting System. Online Voting System is a voting system by which any Voter can use his/her voting rights from anywhere in the country. We provide a detailed description of the functional and performance characteristics of online voting system. Voter can cast their votes from anywhere in the country without visiting to voting booths, in highly secured way. That makes voting a fearless of violence and that increases the percentage of voting.

Users are individuals who interact with the system. All user interaction is performed remotely through the user’s web browser when the system is web based.

Users are categorized into three classes: Administrator, Returning Officers and Voters.

A running version of the system will have only one Administrator but it typically has multiple returning officers and voters. The administrator is responsible for managing user accounts, polls, system resources and logs and for the health and safekeeping of the system. Returning officers have the responsibility of managing a poll as assigned by the administrator, whereas voters only have the ability to submit ballots on polls in which they are admitted.

 

1.1   STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The inefficiency of voting process in SUG elections has resulted in a lot of problems.  These problems have continued to obstruct the peace and tranquility of elections as the choice of a capable candidate is not encouraged by the existing system.

These problems include

• High rigging during electoral process
• A single voters casting his vote multiple times
• Inefficient and inaccurate counting of voters by officers concerned.
• Long queues observed at polling stations
• Illegible voters casting their vote
• Loss of votes due to either wrong voting of the use case of any accident occurring during transportation of the statement of result and other electoral materials to the collection centers.

 

1.2           PURPOSE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The main aim of this project work is to design online voting software which among others be able to achieve the following targets;

• Each voter will be able to vote only once
• Nobody will have access to the votes before the official opening of the electronic ballot box.
• The votes cast cannot be intercepted, modified or diverted.
• The on-line site will resist any attack
• Only registered voters will have access to the application
• Voters will be protected against any attempt of identified theft.
• The secrecy of the vote will be guaranteed
• Rigging of the election will be controlled
• The system will not accept vote outside the voting period
• It shall put to an end the indiscriminate alteration of election result by officer of the electoral committees in SUG elections.

 

1.4   SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

A voting system contains rules for valid voting, and how votes are counted and aggregated to yield a final result. Common voting systems are majority rule, proportional representation or plurality voting with a number of variations and methods such as first-past-the-post or preferential voting.

In election systems, protecting the integrity and privacy of critical data (e.g., votes, configurations, ballot definitions) is undeniably important

1.5   SCOPE/DELIMITATION

The scope of the project is that it will use the UserID and password created by user during registration in the voting system, through this all the details of voter are saved in database. And it will act as the main security to the voting system.

The study also covers voting processes as it is done at the SUG elections in various tertiary institutions. It also inculcates the voters’ personal records, candidates’ personal records and voting procedures.

1.6   LIMITATION/CONSTRAINTS

        Due to non-availability of the vital components and limited ICT resources required for the design and implementation of online voting system, this work implementation shall be limited to Visual-Basic 6.0.  However, the immediate availability of components will help the f design of the researcher to achieve its objectives fully when strictly implemented.

 

1.8           DEFINITION OF TERMS

Ballot Paper:   Material with which voters used to cast their votes.

Ballot Box:      A container in which voters drop their votes

Ballot:      A vote recorded in an election.

Collection Centre:   A designated location where results are collected.

Computer:       An electronic device that stores data, processes data and produces an output as information.

SUG election: Student Union Government elections

Election:  The act of choosing by voting one of the candidates for a position.

Home Page:     The front door to a website.  Normally contains links to other sites or pages.

HTML:      Hyper Text Mark-up Language.

Poll:         The process of voting at an election.

Poll Station:    A centre or venue where voters cast their votes.

Rigging:   To manipulate election result in favour of another person.

Voter’s Card:   This is a card given to a voter to ascertain that he has the right to voter.

Votes Register:        This is a register containing the data of eligible voters completed by the election officials.

Web Site:         It is a location on the web that publishes some kinds of information.