09-10-2012, 01:49 PM
SECURE WEB BASED VOTING SYSTEM FOR THE CASE OF ADDIS ABABA CITY
Abstract
The intension of this project is developing a supplemental voting system for Ethiopia, particularly to Addis Ababa City. The current mechanism for handling the vote management system of the country is limited on manual work. This has limitation on controlling the work securely, for declaring the result on time, and has high consumption on resources. Many countries have used different technologies to support their voting activity and have got successful results. Electronic voting is the most known technology for voting from the existed alternatives. This project proposes a web based electronic voting. The experience of other countries is used as an input for the system. The requirements for the system are collected from historical records and policies of the Ethiopian election. The system architecture, the security risks, and the implementation details of the system are also included in the document.
Introduction
Nowadays, the application of ICT is introduced at several domains of fields. Its’ multidimensional benefits is becoming more visible from time to times. The economical benefit gained from the technology is the most significant one. Further more, it helps to increase the qualities of the work, reduces the complexities of tasks, keeps the security of data in most favorable condition, makes data transfer more easy, and others.
ICT role is wide, starting from low level systems to high level business and governmental applications. The business applications are used by business people to manage the business process; e-commerce can be taken as one example that shows the application of ICT to the business community. Similarly, ICT can play its role for governmental applications. Election is one of the tasks of the government that can be benefited from ICT. Electronic voting is common in several countries, but not known in Ethiopia till now.
This project initiated to start an initial work on e-voting for Ethiopia that can be extended in the future. The project does not have a plan to totally replacing the existed paper based voting methods. But rather, for supplementing the existed paper based vote casting with ICT. There are countries which are using both the paper based and electronic based vote casting system for one election process. For instance, Switzerland has managed its voting system both by electronic and with the manual method at one time [2].
One of the challenges for e-voting is identity identification issue. In the current voting system of Ethiopia, identity card is used for identifying the individuals and ink for separating voters who have given their vote. It is possible to use this traditional individuals’ identification mechanism to e-voting as well. But the methodology has
problems; it didn’t address the problems very well that are raised related with
uniqueness identification. For example, it has lesser capability to protect voters from registering at more than one place. This system proposes alternative technology that can minimize uniqueness identification problems seen on the current voting system.
Many countries have automated systems that can help to uniquely identify its citizens. For instance, USA uses Social Security Number (SSN) for this purpose. In Ethiopia, there is no such strong uniqueness identification system. This project considers the case by assuming that there is automated system that facilitates citizens’ identification task, which is an external system that communicates with this system through the network. If this methodology is employed, it can minimize double voters registration problem, reduces age related problem for electors, protects those which are not eligible to cast a vote due to court related cases, identifies localities of individuals very well, etc.
The rest of the document is organized in such a way that, chapter-2 describes about the review work. In chapter -3 and chapter 4 the requirement analysis and the system design of the document respectively, chapter-5 describe about the implementation of the product, finally chapter 6 and chapter 7 describe; summary and conclusion of the document respectively.
Problem Statement
In most cases, computer programs are developed for handling daily routine tasks. But voting process is not an everyday task. In Ethiopia, it is conducted within every five year. However, the volume of the work is massive and wide. The current system used in Ethiopia for this purpose is manual starting from the registration process till the vote counting stage. It is complex and error prone task. The material cost required for managing the whole vote process is also high. The time for declaring the final result will also be beyond the schedules. Moreover, it seeks strong security system. By considering the complexity of the vote management system, many countries have been automating their voting process, and have gained successful result.
Therefore, implementing the state of art technology for Ethiopia that can reduce the major problems seen on the paper based vote casting system is necessary. The technology is tried in many countries and brings significant changes. And this project targets to do an initial work on the area that can be extended in the future.
Major Challenges of Web-based Voting System
• Protecting double vote casting
• Maintaining uniqueness of voters
• Establishing secured private network infrastructure that reaches to at each of the polling stations
• Identifying major security risks and addressing them
• Exhaustively testing the system to make sure its reliability
Objective
General Objective
The main objective of the project is producing an electronic voting system that can supplement the current paper based voting system of Ethiopia.
Specific Objectives
• Designing the system architecture of the system
• Designing back-end database to the system that can hold all the information
• Designing friendly user interface
• Implementing standard security algorithms that can keep the confidentiality of the data at rest as well as at communication lines
• Selecting the appropriate development tools for the system
• Integrating the whole system
• Testing the system
• Documenting the whole system
Scope
The scope of this project is developing e-voting system for Ethiopia, specifically to Addis Ababa City that can be extended in the future. There are different kinds of electronic voting system in the world, but this project targets to do web based e-voting system. The system contains modules that can handle voters’ and candidates’ registration system, including vote counting module.
Methodology
The following are some of the main procedures that are followed to work the project;
• Assessing the experience of other countries that have used electronic voting
• Studying the current voting system of Ethiopia to get the requirement of the system
• Study the security risks of e-voting
• Study the current security technologies so as to implement in the system
• Assessing the available network infrastructure that helps for data transfer