CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 1.1 Background
of the Study
“ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM” is an online voting
technique, were people
who have citizenship of a country and whose age is above 18 years of age and any sex
can cast his\her vote online without going to any
physical polling station. There is a database design to manage all voters with
their complete information stored.
In “ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM” a voter can use
his\her voting right online without any difficulty. He\She has to be registered
to be qualified for voting. Registration is mainly done by the system
administrator for security reasons. The system administrator registers the
voters on a special site of the system visited by him only by simply filling a
registration form to register voters. Citizens seeking registration are expected
to contact the system administrator to submit their details. After the validity
of them being citizens of that country has been confirmed by the system
administrator by comparing their details submitted with those in existing
databases such as those as the Registrar of Persons, the citizen is then
registered as a voter.
After registration, the voter is assigned a secret Voter ID with which
he/she can use to log into the system and enjoy services provided by the system
such as voting. If invalid/wrong details are submitted, then the citizen is not
registered to vote.
Election
is a process where citizens vote to elect officials or their representatives to
office or vote on bills and amendments trying to be passed, in most cases by
using ballot paper and box. After the electorate the electoral body is left
with the responsibility of separating, counting and announcing the result. This
process is a manual process and it has a lot of problems and challenges
associated with it as almost 90% of the procedures used in conducting the
election are done manually which is prone to errors and mistakes. This brings
rejection of results by other contestant’s especially when the result is not in
their favor.
Politicians
and electorate have been clamoring for a better way of conducting credible
elections that will be acceptable by all, but the electoral body is left in the
middle as the electoral act doesn’t allow the use of electronic voting(e-voting)
that has been left to the National Assembly for the amendments of the electoral
act.
The
complexity of conducting the elections manually has resulted in bringing many
problems to the electoral body; they are left with the problem of ensuring that
the elections they conduct are credible and acceptable by all which will also
help in bringing some credibility to the commission. Because the commission has
lost credibility in the eyes of some electorate, the electorate feels that
their votes does not always count the highest bidder is always announce the
winner of the election even if his vote does not reflect that. That always
result in the other contestant to head for elections tribunal, and the tribunal
always takes time in delivering judgment on the matter due to several reasons.
1.2 Statement
of Problem
The manual system use
in conducting elections in F.C.T Independent Electoral Commission has numerous
challenges attach to it and the problems has become a bone in the neck of the
electoral body, it is a very disappointing issue for an electoral body to be
conducting elections in that manner in this 21st century were
technology has become the order of the day, everything is being automated for
fast, efficient, reliable and cost effective result.
The manual system of
conducting election in the F.C.T Independent Electoral Commission has many
challenges which may include but not limited to;
1.
The process of registering voters for
the election is not completely free from voters registering in two places with
the same information, as there is no any unique identity for each voter. Even
though card readers where introduced in the last general elections which was
also faulty in some voting centre’s, yet the problem of double registration
still persists.
The
manual process of conducting election makes use of ballot paper and boxes which
the voter’s (electorate) always use to cast their vote by thumb printing the
ballot paper on the logo of the party of their candidate choice, then the voter
will cast his vote into the ballot box.
This
process of voting has serious problems associated with it, in some cases the
ballot paper and boxes are snatched from the election officials either on their
way or at the polling booth and in some instances you end up hearing result
from that polling booth when election didn’t really take place. In this
scenario the election can be characterized as not free and fair as the
electorate where disfranchise of their constitutional duty of electing who rule
or govern them.
2.
In the manual system of conducting election the process of collecting result from
polling booths, to ward level, to the local government level and finally to the
electoral commission all the counting of votes, calculating of votes for the
different candidate’s in all those stages are all done manually (verbal
counting) which are prone to errors and mistakes. At this stage politicians or
candidate’s contesting in the election try to buy the result by trying to bribe
or entice the electoral officer’s with mouth watering promises for them to give
the result in his/her favor even if the ballot cast by the electorate didn’t
favor them. This process makes the electoral body to loss it credibility in the
eyes of the electorate as their vote’s does not always count and the contestant
are left with no option than to lay their complains to the electoral tribunal.
1.3 Motivation
The motivation I got to
embark on this research work was because of the problems I saw on our electoral
process so I decided to embark on this research so as to solve some if not all
the problems associated with the manual process of conducting elections in the
F.C.T, And because these problems have caused under development and bad
leadership in the society, because is not always free and fair.
1.4 Aims and Objectives
The aim is to design
and implement an online voting system for F.C.T Independent Electoral
Commission for conducting an online election that will be free and fair and
acceptable by all. And the objective is to eliminate all the problems associated
with the old system.
1.5 Purpose of the Study
This research work was
decided to be conducted due to the problems facing the manual system been used
by the electoral commission and I saw a need that studies should be carried out
in this field so as to ascertain other ways of conducting election that would
be more reliable and acceptable by all. When this study is successfully
completed, the new system will eliminate dual registration of individual in two
different places, it will also eliminate the problem of ballot paper and box
snatching, and the rigging associated to politicians of enticing the electoral
officials with money or mouth watering promises.
Because of the
importance of this research work and the problems is going to solve when
successfully completed and the impact the study will make on the citizens
especially the F.C.T electorate, because the new system will allow the
electorate to elect their leader’s and those that will represent them with the
assurance that their vote will count and the election will be free and fair as
the new system will eliminate all the problems associated with the old system.
These are the reason that made me to embark on this research work by dedicating
my time, resource, energy, strength in carrying out the study.
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