PROJECT PROPOSAL FOR ONLINE

VOTING SYSTEM
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The advancement made in technology over the past few years has been tremendous. The
computer alone has progressed at a remarkable pace, and updates are continually occurring.
Along with the progress of the computer comes the transformation of the virtual world.  The
Internet is a fairly recent concept that has profoundly affected our daily lives.  As with
anything new, the Internet possesses various mysteries.  Research is being conducted to
determine the possibilities of an on-line voting.  Internet voting opens the door to all sorts of
possibilities for our state voting in future.
Therefore, voting is a means of selecting or choosing leaders, it does not apply only to local
government, states and federal government of Nigeria but also in different institutions and
social organization.  The conduct of elections in a democratic society is very important not
only because through it a change of government is effected but also because voting is the
main form of political participation for most people.  For democracy to be sound, it should be
anchored on election free from fraud.
Over the years, the voting operation has been put under a manual system of operation which
mostly results in inaccuracy and ineffective election.  It is gradually being realized that much
faster accurate, effective and efficient system is needed to be adopted.  Here on-line is to be
instituted to handle voting.
The on-line voting system ensures that each intended voter is checked whether he/she is
registered or not, if he/she is not registered, the system refuses him voting.  Also it checks
whether he/she has voted for that particular election.  This on-line voting system prevents a
situation where a particular candidate seizes the voters’ cards, and uses them to vote for
himself.  Hence the rigging associated with the manual voting systems has been completely
handled.  The system also takes care of result calculation of each candidate in particular
election and the percentage scored in that election. This eliminates rigging associated with the
calculation and counting of votes.
A means of showing the various outputs is also adopted by the system the output can either
be displayed on the screen or a hard copy of it can be produced depending on the choice of
the user. This prevents interactive and unintentional typographical errors in showing the
results of the elections.
With an on-line voting, voters can cast only once it will also afford people who are sick and
unable to go to polling stations to cast their vote.  It should be noted however that on-line

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voting will not replace the existing ballot forms, but is offered as a supplementary way of
casting a ballot.

1.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The inefficiency of voting process of the current system has resulted in a lot of problems.
These problems include High rate of rigging during election process, Multiple voters,
Inefficient and inaccurate counting of voters by officers concerned, Long queues observed at
polling stations, Illegible voters casting their vote and loss of votes due to either wrong voting
or the case of any accident occurring during transportation of the statement of result and other
electoral materials to the collection centers.

1.2 PROJECT JUSTIFICATION

In view of the rapid development of computer technology in virtually all fields of operation

in department of local government department and its use in relation to information

management, it has become important to look into the development of electronic voter’s

registration system to enable the student’s departmental government to achieve the following;

 Conduct free and fair election whereby students can vote only once by registering

each student with their matriculation number.

 Safeguard data and information in the system.

 Reduce workload in the process of conducting election.

 Keep accurate record of votes.

1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The main objective of this project work is to design an online voting system which among
others will be able to achieve the following targets;
(i)       Each voter will be able to vote only once for a particular election
(ii)      Nobody will have access to the votes before the official opening of the electronic
ballot.
(iii)    The votes cast cannot be intercepted, modified or diverted.
(iv)    The online site will resist any attack
(v)      Only registered voters will have access to the application
(vi)    Voters will be protected against any attempt of identified theft.

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(vii) The secrecy of the vote will be guaranteed
(viii)   Rigging of the election will be controlled
(ix)    The system will not accept vote outside the voting period

1.4 PROJECT SCOPE

The study covers voting processes as it is done at the ward councillorship election and local
government chairmanship elections.  It also inculcates the voters’ personal records,
candidates’ personal records and voting procedures.

1.5 PROJECT METHODOLOGY

To be able carry out the project, a thorough survey of literature will be done to be able to
understand the field of information and the appropriate programming language to use. This
gives an in depth understanding on the website to be developed and also informed us on how
to conduct the system investigation.
The project shall be ascertain by analyzing the background of the existing system, through
succinct observation, literatures (from library and the internet) will be utilized for review,
questionnaire will be employed if necessary.
The compilation of all information gathered through all adopted methodology will therefore
be gathered and forwarded to my supervisor for subtraction and addition to ascertain a
proceed onto the next step.
The success of the highlighted stage will therefore lead to the system design of the new
system, and will be tendered to my supervisor for necessary amendment. The permission to
proceed from this stage will therefore lead to the implementation of the development of the
software; however, it shall be tendered before my supervisor for validation before
documentation of the software developed for the new system.
The system will be developed with PHP, HTML, BOOTSTRAP, JAVASCRIPT and
MYSQL, throughout the process of implementation both the internal and external
documentation will be taking. The developed system will be demonstrated to our supervisor
to ensure compliance with the system design.