Project Title;

ELECTRONIC VOTING
(Internet voting systems)

Background to the Study

Elections allow the populace to choose their representatives and express their preferences for how they will be governed. Naturally, the integrity of the electoral process is fundamental to the integrity of democracy. A good electoral process is one that ensures the preservation of the secret ballot, accuracy, privacy, integrity and proper tabulation of the voters intent regardless of his or her physical condition, language of origin, or literacy ability. The election system must be sufficiently robust to withstand a variety of fraudulent behaviors and must be sufficiently transparent and comprehensible that voters and candidates can accept the results from an election. Indeed, free and fair elections are a component of all definitions of democracy. The electoral process will be divided into several phases/steps with the most difficult and largest being identified as the voter registration phase; it is a major source of disparities within processes in many democratic institutes like Makerere as more discreet and often effective ways of rigging take place in the months leading up to the election (Casting votes). To avoid any short comings in the period leading up to polling day, special attention should be taken to ensure that the voter registration list is accurate and reliable where an accurate list means eligible voters are only registered once and in a database. Internet voting systems are appealing for several reasons: 1. People are getting more used to work with computers to do all sorts of things, namely sensitive operations such as shopping and home banking. 2. They allow people to vote far from where they please without having to make very long lines and this in turn helping to reduce absenteeism rate.

Problem Statement:

Feasibility study report;

Potential voters lack an adequate and organised system to easily access, modify or register to vote yet election managers need software to ease management of the electoral process. This problem can be addressed in part by use of the system to provide an interface for potential voters to make claims or view there voters status and for election officials to administer or monitor the registration process. Besides, registration lists generated from the system may be used for other purposes, such as helping election administrators determine the best location for polling places, how many voting stations and poll workers to assign to a given polling place, voter turnout, and so forth.

Through the ease of voter registration and verification brought by the system, elections regularity will be achieved. There will be fewer cases of names missing on the register which will increase the confidence of voters and boost their turn up to vote. Update of the register will be instantaneous. Ideally voters will have more time to access and view the voter register and be able to make any complaints as soon as possible. With new registration verification capabilities brought by the web-based system, the Electro Commission will provide better information on the voting trends of the population and the system will help all parties (voters and Election managers) achieve better results, increase efficiency, and transparency of the electoral process. Furthermore, the time and money spent on the elections will be greatly reduced. This system can be taken as a system or agent that helps those with the right to vote get their names onto the voter register, acknowledge registration of a voter to the register, as well as help the election administrators plan and manage the electoral process by ensuring accurate and current voter registration rolls.

Techniques used to determine the requirements for the Information System

Observation.
This is the use of ones naked eyes to witness an event or collect information about an event. When we were using this technique, we observed that the current System or way of doing things was being avoided by many people who did not want to stand in lines or wait to vote for long hours thus most people not finding it convenient.

Interviews
This is where concerned parties are asked questions to get there reactions on the current system and what they think should be done for battement of the system, improvement and increase turn up.

Functional Requirements
These include the inputs, outputs, data stores, processing.

Inputs
1. Student number 2. Registration number 3. Verification code

Computation/Processing 1. Validation 2. Authorization 3. Authentication 4. Confirmation 5.

Outputs 1. Results of; a. Total votes b. Invalid votes c. Valid votes d. Individual votes Response time

Non-Functional Requirements
Costs -Development cost -Operational costs Security Availability Reliability Access control Performance