Chapter 1

Introduction

Background of the Study

Human beings nowadays need to have a specific set of skills to survive in this

competitive and vast world as well as to progress. This set of skills can be referred to as

Education.

Education is recognized as a gateway to the opportunities and benefits of

economic and social development. It develops the modes of self-presentation, self-

image, and social class identifications, which are the crucial ingredients of job

adequacy.It is far more than mere reading, writing, and solving.

The significance of education is evident in acquiring a subject matter and basic

knowledge needed to get by in our everyday life. Education is one of the most important

investments a country should provide to its people and the future as it unlocks a

country's potential for economic growth.

Education also provides appropriate socialized economic structure which is

essential in a society,and the idea of having an educational system will greatly enhance

the efficiency of education in every country.

Educational System merelyhelps integrate youth into the economic system,

through a structural correspondence between its social relations and those of

production.In line with this, the Student Council was established as supplementary tothe

adopted educational system.

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 A Student Council is a representative structure for students, through which they

can become involved in the affairs of the school, working in partnership with school

management, staff and parents for the benefit of the school and its students. It also

explores the vastness of leadership and service potential of students to harness and

develop them for optimum empowerment - to act as catalyst for moral and social

change.

The Student Council may make rules governing its meetings and the business

and conduct of its affairs, but it shall consult with the Board of Management before

doing so.Such rules may include the drawing up of a Constitution where a Student

Council does not already have a constitution in place - it should be encouraged to draw

one up. When the Student Council have drawn up their Constitution, it should be

presented to the Board for formal ratification.

According to the Education Act 1998, the Board of Management of the school is

responsible, for drawing up rules for the establishment of a Student Council. These rules

must comply with the Department of Education and Science guidelines – Student

Councils: A Voice for Students.

The Board must give students a copy of the rules if students say they want to set

up a Student Council.Students as well, are taught and encouraged to exercise their right

of suffrage as it is implemented by every institution and the state in general.

In that case, the Student Council elections have always been an annual activity

for every school. It is an opportunity to choose who will be the leader that would

supervise the student body and look in their welfare. The importance of this activity is to

form unity and to have an edge of choosing the most deserving.It is the time the students

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are given a power and a voice to suggest and to choose whoever they wanted to speak on

behalf of them.

However, the traditional way of Student Council elections exhibits major

problems in the security of votes and expenses on the materials for the casting and

tallying of the votes. Class officers consumed much of their time with this activityfor

theyneed to tally the votes together with their respective advisers.

Malasiqui Catholic School which is located at BonifacioStreet,Malasiqui,

Pangasinan is one of the various schools who are still exercising the traditional way of

Student Council Election in their High School Department.

The Malasiqui Catholic School (MCS) was planned to be established based on

the vision of a highly spirited priest, Rev. Fr. Alfredo Cayabyab, who discovered the

need of a high school that would possess Christian education and provide the maturing

needs of the young individuals of the town as well as coping up with the elevated

requisitions of time, thus, having evangelization as the nucleus of every operation in its

exertion to breed individuals and ultimately enhancetheir spiritual, mental, social,

emotional, and physical areas.

Envisioning its diversified advantages and ameliorations, he turned to the late

Msgr. Alberto B. Zabala, and the parish priest of the St. Ildephonse Parish in Malasiqui,

and asked him to direct the foundation of the said institution. With the unified response

of Msgr. Zabala who showed sensitivity to the needs and grievances of the people, and

his fellow priests and constituents who undoubtedly assisted him,MCS was established.

MCS, clinging to its main principle, opened its doors on September 10, 1964

with Rev. Fr. Alfredo Cayabyab as its first director and Rev. Fr. Jesus A. Cabrera as its

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first principal. It held classes for its pioneer students (freshmen) in three sections. Three

years after, Rev. Fr. Cayabyab had to leave the school for another ministry.

In 1968, Malasiqui Catholic School consisting of 30 boys and 31 girls under the

General Secondary Curriculum had finally produced its first batch of graduates.The

school population steadily grew and currently have 1200 estimated number of

population. Primarily, they decided to constitute a Student Body Government or

generally known as the Student Council.

The said league will be responsible for the governance of students;

communicating and consulting with all of the students in the school, involving as many

students as possible in the activities of the Council; planning and managing the

programme of activities for the year; accounting to the Board of Management, for any

funds raised by the Council.

In this 21st century, people became more literate especially with the use of

computers. Technologies emerged to introduce variety of advancement. In the new era

of advanced technology, it helps boost work speed, reduces mistakes and promotes the

generation of accurate results, and so having manual election system became a

misfortune.

Fortunately, the introduction of computers greatly improves the speed and

efficiency of voting process. Results could be attained even right after the voting,

reducing the time to a mere fraction compared to the time it takes if the voting is done

manually. It also increases the level of the voting experience because of multimedia

enhancements.

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 Now more than ever, technology is changing the voting process, express

opinions, and make decisions. As access to technology and the Internet proliferate

throughout the world, online voting provides new ways for the people to make their

voice heard, contribute ideas, and participate in elections and decision-making.

Online Voting System is a system that facilitates the running of elections and

surveys online. This system has been developed to simplify the process of organizing

elections and make it convenient for voters to cast their vote remotely from their home

computers while taking into consideration security, anonymity and providing

auditioning capabilitiesas well as for tallying the votes and automatically producing

results and polling forecasts. The concept of this system was somehow adopted from the

Direct-recording electronic voting machine.

A Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine records votes by means of a

ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be

activated by the voter such as buttons or touchscreen that processes data with computer

software; and that records voting data and ballot images in the computer memory. After

the election, it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored in a removable memory

component and as printed copy. These systems use a precinct count method that

tabulates ballots at the polling place. They typically tabulate ballots as they are casted

and print the results after the close of polling. ( League of Women Voters of Winchester,

MA, March 2004 )

As for the Online voting system, it will provide online displaying of ballots and

centralized online tallying of votes in which the data will be stored in a database for the

broadcasting of results.

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 The above statements geared the proponents to prefer Malasiqui Catholic School

as the benefactor and recommend them to shift into a smarter, easier, and more effective

way of conducting student council election through the proposed Online Student

Council Voting System.

In this study, the proponents tried to cover the problems confronted by voters,

election officials and parties during elections to suggest a system that would ensure the

security from fraud during elections and to facilitate a safe and rapid counting of votes

afterwards.

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Statement of Objectives

The general objective of this study is to redesignthe current approach towards the

selection of the Student Council which will allow voters to cast votes in a more

convenient way. It aims at bringing a change in the existing election process used in

Malasiqui Catholic School for a small-scale election.

Specifically, the study aims to:

1. describe the existing Student Council election process of Malasiqui Catholic

School;

2. determine the requirements for the development of a secured online voting

system;

3. develop a prototype and design an online voting system that exhibits

ACCURACYwhichis essential to the data entry of voters and candidates, casting

and tallying of votes, and displaying of results; SECURITY AND

AUTHENTICATION which sets the accessibility of the data and system to the

users; and IMMEDIATE RETRIEVAL AND STORAGE OF INFORMATION.

4. Test and validate the system based on the requirements acquired.

Significance of Study

This study envisionsthe development of the manual student council voting of the

chosen sponsor. It is intended for the rendition of trusted election process through an

online voting system.

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 Accuracy. This study can also further enhance the accuracy of all valid votes

and the final outcome; permit voting once for only eligible voters, allows verification of

the votes performed by the voters, and includes login forms for the users.

Authentication. The authentication of voters and candidates will be possible as

the system administrator registers the student information and provides them the election

code which will be significant for security reasons. When voters cast their vote outside

the school premises, they could be identified simply by their Student ID number.

Data Integrity. In this set up, the system could possess data integrity which is

beneficial to the users wherein the voters could ensure that their votes are counted to the

candidate they have chosen by receiving an online receipt file after voting. At the same

time, the cases of vote miscounts could be reduced since at the backend of this system

resides a well-managed database.

The individual votes are submitted to the database which can be queried to find

out who among the aspirants of a certain position received the highest number of votes.

The result will be immediately posted online as the databaseis being updated throughout

the duration of the election.

Timely computation. The election can be held in a timely manner wherein all

computations during the election are done in a reasonable amount of time and voters are

not required to wait on other voters to complete the process.

Another earmark of this systemis the online exposure of the individual

candidates and parties as the system features their information via hosted website. This

quality of the system would give additional benefit to the campaign tactics of the

aspirants.

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 Graphical User Interface. This system ensures a lot of advantages to moderate

the Student council election and subsequently reinforce its transparency and fairness as

well as providing easy and user-friendly environment for the interaction of the voter

with the system through a conventional World Wide Web browser.

Scope and Limitations

This study encompasses only the development and implementation of an online

student council voting system which secures a reliable election by undergoing a series of

process.

First, the voters are registered and given the login details to log into the

system.The voters are authenticated by the system and verified if the voter has the right

to access the system.

The voters cast their votes and the system saves the votes into the database. The

votes are managed, sorted and prepared for the counting.Afterwards, the votes are

decrypted and counted.

The system checks whether the eligible voters voted and if their votes were

counted for the final tally.Lastly, the results of the final tally will then be published on

the hosted website.

The systemalso comprises the ability of the system administrator to add and

remove users as well as updating their information. It could allow the system admin to

create, remove, update, and edit an event.

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 The proposed system is certainly responsive and adaptive as the human effort

required in managing the voting sessions is drastically reduced mainly because the major

processes such as voting and processing of votes is managed by the system.

The system does not cover the Student Management System of Malasiqui

Catholic School. It is mainly focused on addressing the election process during their

perennial Supreme Student Council elections which only includes the students and

school administration of the school premises. Maintenance staff are prohibited to use the

system as they are not included in the election event process.

Definitions of Terms

The following terms are defined structurally by simplicity and common

understanding of the research.

Administrator.The person who has full access to the user’s computer. Admin

operates the database to monitoring the number of voting process. Also manage security

which

Client.A person to act operate to the user’s computer. The clients are the

students, voters and candidates.

Data. Is a record or a collection of anitem.

Database. Is organized collection of data for one or more purposes that can be

stored, recorded, managed, and updated the voting data and ballot from the storage.

Entity. A person represented by a record in a database.

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 Online. Is the state of being connected to the internet or a system, now it can be

use part of voting system for election event.

Online Voting System. Is a system that facilitates the running of elections and

surveys online.

Server. It acts give data resources that can be shared by the different clients.

Student Council. Is a representative structure for students, through which they

can become involved in the affairs of the school, working in partnership with school

management, staff and parents for the benefit of the school and its students.

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