CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1          BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Elections allow the populace to choose their representatives and express their references for how they will be governed. Naturally, the integrity of the election process is fundamental to the integrity of democracy itself. The election system must be sufficiently robust to withstand a variety of fraudulent behaviors and must be sufficiently transparent and comprehensible that voters and candidates can accept the results of an election. In context of Western democracies’ current crisis, electronic voting has become a very popular topic of discussion in academic and technical circles.

Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an electorate to make a decision or express an opinion—often following discussions, debates, or election campaigns. It is often found in democracies and republics. Electronic voting (also known as evoting) is a term encompassing several different types of voting, embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes.

For many years, paper-based ballot is used as a way to vote during campus election day. This matter put an inefficient way of voting process as students have to queue up to register their name before they can vote. Furthermore, the traditional way of voting will take a long process and time. So, the novel electronic voting using minutiae will become the best solution for the matters; besides provide easier way of voting.

Compared to existing voting system the Electronic voting has several advantages like: Electronic voting system is capable of saving considerable printing stationery and transport of large volumes of electoral material. It is easy to transport, store, and maintain. It completely rules out the chance of invalid votes. Its use results in reduction of polling time, resulting in fewer problems in electoral preparations, law and order, candidate’s expenditure, etc. and easy and accurate counting without mischief at the counting centre.

Electronic voting system is a way of replacing the regular voting system of passing paper ballots into a box and then counting the paper votes determining the winner. An electronic voting system has the potential to perform faster, reduce the amount of people needed to hold an election, and bring more comfort towards the voting procedure. On the other hand, an electronic voting system poses new risks and threats towards the voting such as: possible exploits, general doubt whether the system works properly or not, and lack of trust as people do not physically see what is happening with their vote.

An electronic voting system is not one given system. Electronic voting system can be classified into three major categories: electronic adding, electronic voting booths, and browser voting. There are more implementations; however these three voting systems are the major ones to be considered.

If an election used an electronic counting machine for the ballots, the election system would appear intact to a manual counting. The procedures made by the voter would be same or very similar to a current system. As soon as the voter would cast the ballot, the electronic machine would come to play. The machine would recognize who the person voted for and add the individual vote counts thus saving time in counting the ballots. The ballots could always be recounted manually to check whether the machine is working as it should. This is a technology developed mostly in the 1980’s however it has been around for longer than that. It is widely used in the USA. In 1996 presidential elections, over 37% of the registered voters used this system.

An electronic voting system with electronic booths would take the voting as far as having a computer of some sort that would authenticate the voter and then give him the option to vote. The voter would press a button, touch the screen, or in any other way make a choice. The machine could then do one of a few things: produce an actual ballot that would be counted by a machine designed to count them, or count the votes as they are casted and print out a confirmation receipt allowing verification of the vote. These booths are being experimented with in many countries, however the trust in these machines varies from country to country.

Some countries continue experimenting with these booths, some have reverted back to paper voting and some are eager to move towards voting from the comfort of their homes.

A browser voting system is a system of voting taking the voting to another level. Voting does not take place in set locations anymore; instead voting can take place in homes, workplaces, or even modern mobile phones. Voting is done through the browser in every individual’s free time. The advantage of this system is that voters do not have to go to a special place in a special time to vote. They can vote when they have time to rather than when they get told to. The disadvantage of these systems is the skepticism it faces from the voters. The voters lose all the physical contact with the voting and therefore are less likely to doubt that their vote has been counted properly.

A browser voting system has further advantages. Recent increasing problem within elections in most of the western countries is falling turnout at the elections. Long queues and set times when people can vote are often discouraging for the voters to attend. If these factors get eliminated and the voters can vote freely as they want, it can be expected for the turnout to increase, thus making the elections more democratic.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The voting/polling process by registered voters in institutions of higher learning is very cumbersome. So many cases of missing data in the delegate registration files have been reported. There are also scenarios where unregistered delegates flock in the election venue as “Dead Voters” to participate in the voting process. Even after voting, malicious clerks and officers-in-charge of the election end up playing with the results figures. This results in the release of wrong results leading to cases of post election violence. Such cases can be solved by insisting on delegates exercising that task online using the Computerized Voting System. The delegates can also vote from anywhere around the school premises, they don’t need to be at the election venue.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

The specific objectives of the project include:  Reviewing the existing/current voting process or approach in Students Election.  Coming up with an automated voting system in the Union; Implementing an automated/online voting system;  Validating the system to ensure that only legible delegates are allowed to vote.

1.4  SCOPE OF STUDY

It is focused on studying the existing system of voting in Higher Institutions and to make sure that the peoples vote is counts, for fairness in the elective positions. This is also will produce: Less effort and less labor intensive, as the primary cost and focus primary on creating, managing, and running a secure web voting portal. Increasing number of delegates as individuals will find it easier and more convenient to vote, especially those who will not be able to come to election venue.

1.5 LIMITATION OF STUDY

Time factor was the greatest barrier to the successful completion of this exercise since it had to be done within the semester. I also had financial constraints since all the activities involved were self-sponsored.

1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS

Voting: This is the action of choosing someone in an election or at a meeting. It is process of casting one’s vote.

Election: This is the process of choosing a person or a group of people for a position, especially a political position by voting. Also can be defined as the act of electing candidates to represent the people of a given country in the parliament

Computer: This can be defined as any device which under the control of a stored program can accept data, process the data in a specified form and supply the result as information in specified form.

System:                This could be defined as a collection of interrelated elements, called data items, which are united by regulated interactions, called procedures and are designed to accomplish some specific purpose (s) or objective(s).

Electronic Voting System: Is an online voting technique. In this system people who have citizens of Rivers State and who is a student of Rivers State Polytechnic and any sex can give his/her vote online without going to any physical voting station. There is a database which is maintained by the Student Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) in which all the names of delegates from each LGAs with complete information is stored.

Data: This is a representation of facts, concepts or instructions in a form suitable for communication or processing, by either human beings or machines. These facts concern entities such as objects, places, people and events.

Database: This is the collection of a well organized data items.