CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND OF STUDY
The foundation of every democratic system of government is voting, whether the system uses representative or direct governance. The joy of every voter is trust that each vote is recorded and tallied with accuracy and impartiality.
Many advanced countries today are now considering the option of Electronic voting (e-voting) because of the numerous privileges and benefits it offers. The world today is being shaped by innovations in information technology and therefore, it is difficult to underestimate the use or application of Information Technology in the administration of any activity particularly having to do with the public.
There are several ways of implementing Electronic voting which includes and not limited to:
- Authentication method which may involve the use of username and password
- Biometric which may involve the use of one part of the body or the other.
- Card system which may be in form of swiping card made of chips on which information are stored.
- RFID which is using Radio Frequency transmission and reception technology to identify people
This project is focused on an Electronic voting system with emphasis on Biometric particularly (The Fingerprint) which provides accurate Identification and avoids representation and proxy. It also involves making the system an open source system.
- PROBLEM STATEMENT
Considering existing voting systems in Nigeria and other African countries, there has been a great technological lag in the technology driving the voting systems so far. There is a problem of impersonation, double voting and lack of central administration of elections due to the non-usage of a well secured voting system. Having a voting system without a perfect means of identification will lack the enumerated below.
- TRANSPARENCY
Election transparency requires full public access to review all election system procedures in order to allow meaningful public scrutiny and verification of ballot security, casting, handling, tabulating, auditing and related election records and tabulations.
- SECURITY
This is compromised when secrecy surrounds the internal processing of votes and ballot tabulation. The security of the vote and voting systems cannot be assured without transparency and public verification.
- ACCURACY
This cannot be assumed if the counting process is performed unobserved and outside of public scrutiny and verification.
- RECOUNTABILITY
Recountability has traditionally depended upon voter marked ballots. Machine generated paper trail systems are not voter marked ballots. There is no assurance that these systems accurately reproduce or tally the vote that was cast. Without voter marked ballots, verification is not assured.
1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this project is to develop an electronic voting system that will define transparency, whose source code is available for modification or enhancement by anyone. The Specific objectives expected from the development of this project are:
- The design and implementation of a biometric Based voting system
- Make the developed biometric system to be available at www.opengithub.com
1.4 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT
The scope of this project will be limited to fingerprint biometric voting system with verifiable paper ballot. The networking capability will be limited to Local Area Network. The system will work on pre-registered voters register database and will not consider voters registration as part of the system.
- METHODOLOGY
In developing this system, Java programming language will be used. Reason for this is that Java is an open source programming language which will give the needed functionalities that the system requires. The nature of the system will require a programming language that supports Biometric capture and manipulations and as well as interactivity by multiple people.
The system will be built to be distributable as jar and will be implementable on any operating system or computer platform.
This system will be built as a client server application pair where one of the applications will be the server and the other will be the client.
Finally, MySQL Database Server will be deployed into the system to provide storage of data that the application will be consuming.
1.6 DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
Considering the vast nature of the technology involved in this project, Java programming will be our primary programming choice because of the flexibility, broad scoped, portability and adaptability of Java language for embedded system. Other tools intended for the development of this project include:
- MySQL Database: The database will be designed with MySQL database engine because of its availability, portability and compatibility with Java systems.
- Netbeans: This development environment is needed for the development of the Java programs.
- Java Script: This will be the scripting language for the development of the client side interactivity of the website.
- Dreamweaver: This software will be used as studio to create PHP codes and html tags. All programming shall be done using this studio.
- Others: There may be need to use other tools like notepad, Corel draw, phpMyAdmin etc.
1.7LIMITATIONS
The development and deployment of this system will make significant impact on the management’s activities outside the class in the university but there will be some limitations that are unavoidable presently.
Some of these limitations are:
- Power Supply still remains a strong hindrance to the success of the implementation of a project like this. There will be need to have reliable source of power supply during implementation wherever the system will be adopted.
- Infrastructure: There still remains the problem of network and communication technology in our society. This will be a serious threat to the success of this project.
- Ignorance and level of awareness may also be a factor of limitation on the part of the intended populace.
- Network infrastructure will also limit the deployment on the network.
1.8 SIGNIFICANCE
This project is significant in election management and voting processes.As an open source system, it will be an image booster for the institution.
1.9 BREAKDOWN OF OTHER CHAPTERS
This project will be made up of five chapters and the remaining four chapters are as introduced below.
- CHAPTER TWO
Literature review: In this chapter, there will be a review several books, journals, materials and other literatures on elections and voting. There will also be a study and review of past works on finger print based information management systems. There will a review of different theories and how applicable they are to our system. Considerations on existing system to compare their similarities and differences, their pros and cons will be made.
- CHAPTER THREE
Analysis and Design: In this chapter, there will be a discussionon our design processes. There will be an analysis of the whole system design and how the execution of the system design was done. This will include:
- Interface design
- Database design and
- System programming
- CHAPTER FOUR
Implementation and testing: After building the system, discussion will be made concerning all the specifications of the developed system, the requirement, setting up the system and eventual testing of the system.
- CHAPTER FIVE
Summary and Conclusions: This chapter shall conclude the project; there will be a summary of all the process of completing the System and giving recommendation.
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