04-01-2013, 04:27 PM
SECURE WEB BASED VOTING SYSTEM FOR THE CASE OF ADDIS ABABA CITY
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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.
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.
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
Related works review
To support the idea of this project, similar works on the area have been assessed in
country as well as in foreign countries. There is one paper which is done for academic
work at Addis Ababa University, Technology Faculty, in Electrical and Computer
Engineering department, which tries to address problem of vote counting in a fixed
audience. The objective of the work was automating the existed audience gathering
system which is currently handled by counting raising hands in the Ethiopia parliament
system [1]. The work is supported by hardware devices. However, the purpose, the
application area, the technology used, and the requirements, are different from this
project.
There are many countries that use electronic voting system effectively at various times.
In October 2001, Australia has made parliamentary election for 16,559 voters to cast their
vote electronically at four polling stations. Since 1999, Belgium has made general and
municipal election. By 2000, and 2002 in Brazil, more than 400 thousand electronic
machines are used at the nation wide. From November 5 to 10, 2003, Canada had made
elections for 12 municipalities using Internet and phone with out using paper ballots. In
October 2005, Estonia had made local elections using Internet as one means to cast vote
and was declared a success by the Estonian election officials. In September 2000,
Sweden, France and Germany tried an on-line election which was sponsored by
European Commission to Cyber Vote project. In 2003, India had made all state elections
held using electronic voting machines. In 2003, Norway had carried out pilots in three
municipalities at local elections using voting machines in the polling stations using
touch screens. In 2003, 2004, and in 2006, England had made voting pilots [2].
The next section summarizes the technical experience of two countries which have very
near similarity to this project. The first one is the case of one of the states of UK,
Stratford-upon-Avon district, for May 2003 of local government election to electorate of
100,000 voters; and the second is the case of Dutch government for 2002/2003 election.