Project Proposal on College Online Voting System

MULTIMEDIA UNIVERSITY OF KENYA

MULTIMEDIA UNIVERSITY ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM PROJECT PROPOSAL

NAME: OTIENO EDWIN ODOYO

REG NUMBER: CIT-221-053/2012

3RD YEAR SEMESTER

SUBMITTED ON 15TH MARCH 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INRODUCTION……………………………………………………3 1.1

Background study………………………………………………………..3

1.2

Problem Formulation and solution……………………………………....3

1.2.1

Problem Definition…………………………………………3

1.2.2

Justification…………………………………………………3

1.2.3

Objectives…………………………………………………..3

1.2.4

Scope………………………………………………………..4

1.2.5

Research Questions…………………………………………4

1.2.6

Basic Assumptions of Study/Project………………………..4

1.2.7

Basic Limitations of Study/Project………………………….4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………..4 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………................4 2.2 Review of Relevant Literature and Opinion…………………………….5 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY………………………………....5 3.1 Participants………………………………………………………………5 3.1.1 Voters…………………………………………………5 3.1.2 Candidates……………………………………………...........5 3.1.3 Multimedia University Election Commission……………………6 3.2 Research Design…………………………………………………………6 3.3 DATA COLLECTION………………………………………………… 6 3.3.1 Questionnaires………………………………………………………6 3.3.2 Interviews…………………………………………….........6

3.3.3 Literature Review………………………………….…………..7 3.4 DATA ANALYSIS……………………………………………………….7 3.5 RESOURCES AND TOOLS REQUIRED FOR THE PROJECT……….7 3.5.1 Development Tools……………………………………………...7 3.5.2 Hardware…………………………………………………………7 3.5.3 Software…………………………………………………………7

4.0 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………….7

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND STUDY Every academic year in Multimedia University of Kenya is one of the most fundamental critical functions to the student community takes place. The election of the student’s leaders is held at March of each academic year in a bid bring fresh in the running of the student organization. The methods of campaign, election and post-election processes have been all same since the inception of the student organization. These methods are in every right acceptable but fall short in this age information and Technology, in that they are slow, entertain rigging to some degree and not so friendly to the environment. Bearing in mind just but the few reasons outlined above, the need for a more fast and robust election/voting system was idealized thus the need for an online voting system. 1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT 1.1.2 Problem definition As the statistics shows that the percentage of polling on the day of elections is not satisfactory as majority of student are not coming to vote and thinks is just as a waste of time. The manual voting system takes long time as there is a lot of paper work first and then human efforts is also there for counting of the votes. The voting of the college elections will be done online such that there is no need to come at the college on the time of elections and the student can vote from the home or from any other place with internet coverage. A USER ID and PASSWORD will be provided to every student of the college so that on the time of elections they can easily login on the election link and use his/her vote. 1.1.2 Justification Web based solutions can be accessed anywhere as long as there is connectivity. Bearing in mind the expensive Multimedia University intranet and the unlimited internet offered by the institution a webbased election system would come in handy to facilitate free and fair elections. The system would be centrally placed and only be active during the election period. The system will incorporate verification of students, voting for the candidates and a real-time tally of the votes. Since it is web-based it can accessed from anywhere, be it campus, in the hostels and even at home. 1.1.3 Objectives

The specific objectives of the project include: To develop an online web-based voting system in Multimedia University that can be used during elections. Validate the system to ensure that only legible voters are allowed to vote. To implement online voting system.

1.2.3 Scope of study The proposed system is focused on the studying the existing system of voting in Multimedia University and to make sure that the peoples vote is counts, for fairness in elective positions. This will also 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 votes as individuals will find it easier and more convenient to vote, especially those abroad. Some features of the system will be: The voters details- the voter’s details such as voters name, ID number, voter security password, voters faculty and year of study. The candidate’s details- the necessary information about the candidate such as name, ID number, post vying, faculty and year of study. 1.2.5 Research Questions a) How does paper work reliance affect elections in Multimedia University? b) What are the ways to help improve elections? c) What are the challenges associated with manual paper work during elections? 1.2.6 Basic Assumptions of study/project The students are computer literate meaning they will be able to use the system without extensive training. The computers and necessary requirements required to deploy the system are already available with the students. 1.2.7 Basic Limitations of study/project  Time constraints-The project is supposed to be complete in few months. This can be handled by having a project management schedule.  Data collection-Collecting data from the stakeholders of the system and involved personnel can be a challenge if required authorization is not provided.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction I intend to review the current situation in the campus which will assist changing the voting system to a better one. Here will look at the current methods and technologies used during voting as well as the processes involved.

2.2 Review of Relevant Literature and Opinion Currently in Multimedia University elections are done using the old age manual ballot system. A list of the students vying for the Students Council has their names outlined so that the school can get to know them. After a week of campaigns the elections are done. List of all the students in MMU is availed to their respective departments. The different departments set up polling stations in different parts of the school to facilitate the elections process. On the polling day, students queue for a chance to vote a list of leaders in the different positions. At the voting room, a student is verified using their Student ID to ascertain that they are genuine students of the campus. Their names’ are crossed off and each is given ballot papers where they check their candidates. Afterwards the votes are cast and the student leaves the room. After the day is over, the tallying is done and depending on when it’s done, the results are announced that day late in the night. Elections allow the students to choose their representatives and express their preferences for how they will be governed. Naturally, the integrity of the election process is fundamental. The design of a good voting system, whether electronic or using traditional paper ballots or mechanical devices must satisfy a number of sometimes competing criteria. The anonymity of a voter’s ballot must be preserved, both to guarantee the voter’s safety when voting against a malevolent candidate, and to guarantee that voters have no evidence that proves which candidates received their votes. The existence of such evidence would allow votes to be purchased by a candidate. The voting system must also be tamperresistant to prevent a wide range of attacks, including ballot stuffing by voters and incorrect tallying by insiders. 2.3 Re-Definition of Problem A voting system must be comprehensible to and usable by the entire voting population, regardless of age, infirmity, or disability. Providing accessibility to such a diverse population is an important engineering problem and one where, if other security is done well, electronic voting could be a great improvement over current paper systems. Flaws in any of these aspects of a voting system, however, can lead to indecisive or incorrect election results. Hence thus the need of Multimedia University online voting system developed in PHP. It is done for the University voting purpose. All the candidates’ names of the different section will be displayed in the screen according to their post. Student has to just go and click the button to vote. Calculation of the vote is done automatically which can be viewed only to the Admin. The winners name will be shown in the screen and even the votes they have gained. So this system can be used for the college voting sake, where there will be complete security, and the time to count the votes will be saved, because of the automatic calculation. CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Participants 3.1.1 Voters These are the students who will be using the system to register as voters and finally vote on the Election Day. 3.1.2. Candidates The candidates will use the system as a platform to provide their details and the post they are vying for.

3.1.3 The Multimedia University Election Commission (MMUEC) The system will help the MMUEC to conduct its mandate of election.

3.2 Research Design In the research analysis of the online voting system, the initial act is to find out how the current systems work. This helps in getting better understanding of the problem that are existent and whether they can be fixed with the proposed systems or whether the system can be upgraded and modified.

3.2.1 Descriptive Design Descriptive research designs help provide answers to the questions of who, what, when, where, and how associated with a particular research problem; a descriptive study cannot conclusively ascertain answers to why. 3.3 DATA COLLECTION The following are the methods of data collection that were used to collect information in the course of the project 3.3.1 Questionnaires This is the method to collect data from target users in a specific knowledge domain. In this case, the target users of the system are the students i.e. voters, the candidates and the Multimedia Election Commission body. Some of the major questions that will be contained in the questionnaires are problems associated with the current voting system, views on the online voting system and the best features of the proposed system. 3.3.2 Interviews The interviews will involve having face to face conversation with the target users. This will be used to get more detailed user requirements.

3.3.3Literature Review Literature review will be used to assess the previous works and see how to improve the new system. Previous studies done on online voting, problems faced during elections.

3.4 DATA ANALYSIS The results from the data collection phase will be analyzed statistically and necessary representation used. Statistical software will be used to analyze relationships between variables. Graphs and charts will be drawn where necessary.

3.5 RESOURCES AND TOOLS REQUIRED 3.5.1 Hardware A laptop with the following specification    

Operating system: windows XP, windows 7 or windows 8 Hard disk: at least 60 GB RAM: at least 1 GB Processor: Intel Pentium IV

3.5.2 Software     

PHP programming language MySQL Database JavaScript for client side validation HTML for web pages structure. CSS(cascaded style sheets) for presentation

4.0 REFERENCES 1. .R. Storn and K. Price, Differential evolution-a simple and efficient heuristic for global optimization over continuous spaces. 2. Electronic Voting and Counting- Development of the system. (2005). Election ACT. 3. October 2002. Institute Policy Institute, “Report of the National Workshop on Internet Voting: Issues and Research Agenda,” Proceedings of the 2000 Annual National Conference on Digital Government Research, 2000, pp.1-59. 4. October 2002. Institute Policy Institute, “Report of the National Workshop on Internet Voting: Issues and Research Agenda,” Proceedings of the 2000 Annual National Conference on Digital Government Research, 2000, pp.1-59.