Automatic Voting System

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Counting and classification of candidates votes

Voting is a painful process especially in calculating votes and recognizing the voted candidate and summing votes to determine the winner of process Due to all this we decided to build a system to run in parallel with existing voting system to lower the overhead and cost of Voting Process and increasing accuracy.

2011-2012 Computer Engineering Depart Shoubra Faculty

Project members:
1-Ahmed Rashad Basuony
(ahmedrashad.1990@gmail.com)

2- Ahmed Ali Ibrahim (ahmed.saraya90@gmail.com) 3-Mohab Tarek El-Shishtawy (mohab123@gmail.com)

Automatic Voting System

Contents
Objective Technology used Steps of Analysis
A. Image processing
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Resizing Converting To gray Enhancing Edges Thresholding Getting Data

B. Neural Network
1. Logestic Regression Algorithm 2. Cost Function 3. Training and updating Theta 4. Testing

C. GUI

Future Work

Objective
Voting is a painful process especially in calculating votes and recognizing the voted candidate and summing votes to determine the winner of process. Due to all this we decided to build a system to run in parallel with existing voting system to lower the overhead and cost of Voting Process and increasing accuracy. So it will works as follow it takes ordinary voted paper recognizing where is the check sign detecting that candidate and increase his votes by one if the correct sign detected, system also capable of calculating overall votes for every candidate and announce the winner, calculating correct votes and invalid ones. The system not only automate the process of calculating votes but also has a high accuracy ratio for detecting different signs that used to vote whether its a check sign, line, reverse signs, or any correct signs and isolate all noise due to faulted papers or poor scanning condition, it reached in some cases to 0.999 in accuracy in detecting signs.

Technology Used
We build our system entirely on Java platform , we chose it for its simplicity for using and not depending on specific OS as it can run anywhere also for high OOP power that enable us to reuse it object or extending our work in future or modifying the system to adapt any condition. Using java enabled us from implementing image processing modules from scratch choosing what is best for our condition for detecting scanned photos and also implementing Neural Network module reducing complexity for detecting and though time required for overall process.

Steps of Analysis
The system consist of three main components Image processing module responsible for preprocessing of scanned image eliminating noise and enhancing edges and reducing amount of data that used by neural though enhancing its accuracy and speed. The second module is Neural Network module used to train our network to different valid signs and calculating percentage of each sign according to trained data and knowing the difference between a valid sign (correct input) and noise or non-valid sign (incorrect input). Third module consist of GUI that enable the employee from using the system enabling him form choosing the database of candidate load and show it then choosing batch directory of scanned images then it will automatically calculate number of votes, correct ones and invalid ones and announcing the winner candidate.

A) Image Processing
Our system used multiple image processing techniques for reducing noise we will discuss them separately showing importance of every one. 1- Resizing We use resizing technique to unify our work on all images whatever input data or images ; our system will automatically takes the picture applying resizing with a special technique without losing any important data to reduce processing image time. 2- Converting To Gray This part takes the image converting it to gray scaled image by calculating the average of RGB component of picture taken as we dont need the complexity of colored image in our processing. 3- Enhancing Edges This module enables us from applying a special filter on whole image detect its edges which is very important in our case as it used for determining vertical and horizontal edges for the scanned paper return the position of every vertical or horizontal line in picture as we use this to separate the square containing the check sign

4- Thresholding Again we use another technique and this one called thresholding its used to convert the gray-scaled image to one bit binary of only black and white enhancing important data and convert it pure white and all other noise or unwanted data converted to black; this again reduced complexity one more time that used afterwards to train neural network and used for detecting when system is running. 5- Getting Data After applying all this operation on the image we want features of the image in this stage the square that contain the check sign so we need to convert it to data for using in neural network as we cant input pure images to Neural module so we used a technique that collects pixels of images in one-dimensional array carrying its features in another words it contain only 1s or 0s representing every black and white pixels of square that contain the check sign.

B) Neural Network
As simplicity of our detecting white sign on Black Square we chose a simple neural technique of Single-neuron. 1- Logistic Regression Logistic regression low complexity suits the limited nature of problem where time is critical and output is only 0 (wrong sign) and 1 (valid sign) Hypothesis Its a classification technique where

2- Cost Function

Gradient

3- Training and updating theta Neural network in this project trained on multiple data-sets of different check signs in different orientations also reversed signs and for negative output we trained our neural on empty black boxes and black boxes with noise or incorrect signs to ensure its accuracy, the training-set (batch) is around 100 different (images) with run learning iterations 100 times and minimum error of 0.04 also we used technique of randomizing input data to increase accuracy. 4- Testing After applying previous training and storing (theta) in separated file our testing hit-ratio of correct signs to probability of 0.999 and for false or noised signs to 0.02 to 0.03.

C) GUI
This module consists of main screen showing different candidates and their properties from names, numbers in list, type of candidate, and collected votes it capable of reading from and comma separated files congaing database of candidates. With a special screen of navigating user can use select scanned images from anywhere in PC to start scan and calculate votes. Also GUI announcing the winner of Elections based on max votes taken and calculates number of total, correct and incorrect votes for whole scanned images.

Future Work
As the system based on java and OOP modules it can be extended easily adding new features or modifying the system to run in any environment. So this can be done in future work:1- Decrease reading image time and whole process time by modifying algorithm. 2- Increasing ability to identify multiple columns images that contain wide rand of candidates. 3- Adding more features to GUI or changing winner methods according to each country system. 4- Classifying candidates and generating charts of votes correct and incorrect.