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Fingerprint and Face Authentication Portable Digital Electronic Voting Machine
Fingerprint and Face Authentication Portable Digital Electronic Voting Machine
Fingerprint and Face Authentication Portable Digital Electronic Voting Machine
Abstract—The paper presents the Electronic Voting Machine investing in Electronic Voting Machines (EVM). The other
(EVM) device to facilitate digital elections with the use of disadvantage of the Paper Ballot system is that it is susceptible
Raspberry Pi as its brain. The EVM is designed to authenticate the to fraud. There is an issue in the recent Philippine Presidential
voter through fingerprint or face authentication. The face Elections in which most voters were advised to voluntarily
authentication method is incorporated with an anti-spoofing surrender their ballots to the poll watchers as the machine that is
technique. Local Binary Pattern Histograms (LBPH) and Haar- supposed to read their ballots is under repair. Even if there are
Cascade Classifier models were used to detect and recognize faces no reported fraudulent activities, it is still possible; therefore,
and eye-blink counters for anti-spoofing. Both authentications
switching to fully automated voting is advisable to prevent fraud
were combined and incorporated into the voting graphic user
[2]. The Paper Ballot system can also hinder the voting ability
interface (GUI), programmed through Python and its libraries to
create the EVM, wherein the voter must authenticate through
of marginalized population, such as the illiterate, [pregnant]
fingerprint or face recognition if they failed the prior method. The women, Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), and senior citizens,
accuracy tests resulted in an overall 80% and 95.56% accuracy for since the voting interpretation and validity is left at the discretion
fingerprint and face authentication, respectively. The anti- of election officers. Electronic Voting Machines will prevent
spoofing technique resulted in an overall accuracy of 100%. The this, ensuring their votes are correctly counted [3]. Aside from
mock elections of 20 voters conducted to test the functionality of significantly reducing electoral costs, tackling fraudulent
the EVM resulted in an 80% fingerprint authentication success activities, and ensuring the participation of the marginalized
rate, while 100% of the remaining 20% passed the face population, using EVMs will also make vote counting quicker
authentication. Those who failed the fingerprint authentication since the results are declared within 2-3 hours compared to the
proceeded to face authentication, resulting in an overall 100% paper ballot system, which takes an average of 30-40 hours vote-
success rate in the authentication of all voters. The database counting time [4].
results matched the receipt of the voters, demonstrating the
device's overall efficiency of 100%. In conclusion, the paper A study of [5] uses PIC16F877A as a microcontroller in an
proposes an efficient and secure EVM that ensures fair and Electronic Voting Machine, making the voting process faster,
transparent digital elections. more reliable, and more efficient. However, there is a problem
with the fingerprint data since the database images have high
Keywords— Electronic Voting Machine, Local Binary Pattern resolution requiring more memory to be allocated. There is also
Histogram (LBPH), Haar-Cascade Classifier, Anti-Spoofing, an Arduino-based EVM that is particularly used in school
Raspbian OS, FirebaseDB elections. This EVM is workable but not 100% efficient since it
can only accommodate three (3) candidates and has limited
I. INTRODUCTION memory [6]. A face recognition feature is commonly used in an
Voting is one of the fundamental rights that an individual Electronic Voting Machine to authenticate the user registered on
possesses as an essence of democracy. It gives them the freedom the server. In the case of twin voters, a two-fold biometric
to choose candidates they think are most suited to represent the authentication is used to avoid it [4]. In biometric testing of the
people and their interests. Among the different voting systems study [7], the parameters False Acceptance Rate (FAR) and
in the world, the Philippines has adopted the Paper Ballot system False Reject Rate (FRR) are applied. The FAR is an
wherein the voters shade the circle beside the candidate’s name identification percentage used when there is an unexpected
on the ballots provided to them and are then fed into a machine acceptance of an unauthorized user, whereas the FRR is the
that will count their votes. This system is good to some extent; percentage of registered but rejected or unmatched users. Based
however, there are disadvantages. One is the possibility of ghost on the calculations, there is a FAR of 2%, an FRR of 10%, and
voting and the production and use of defective ballots, marked an overall 94% high accuracy indicating that the biometric is
as wastage. Despite the number of faulty ballots being a small reliable for user authentication. The OpenCV library is
percentage overall, this percentage is still significant, especially integrated and then executed by Python language. The Haar-
in small-scale voting [1]. This wastage can be avoided by Cascade and Local Binary Pattern Histogram model is used for
face detection and recognition authentication [8]. Also, the use middle, ring, pinky) they are to register with, they will also be
of Raspberry Pi 4 as the processing unit in running the face the only ones aside from the proponents who will know which
recognition was conducted [9]. A certain device with a face one to use for their authentication. This factor will add to the
recognition feature that also uses Haar-Cascade has a 92% security of the EVM system.
accuracy in recognizing its subjects. The Local Binary
This study proposes to create an Electronic Voting Machine
Histogram (LPB) algorithm resulted in an accuracy of 91%,
that uses two authentication methods, fingerprint and face
which both accuracy rates are considered high percentages [10].
recognition, to prevent fraud and the possibility of ghost voting.
One of the disadvantages of face recognition features is that it is
prone to identity fraud because of facial spoofing. Facial Producing an EVM will also remove the need to print out ballots
where there is unavoidable production of defective ones. The
spoofing is using a person’s face through a photo, a video, or a
EVM will be set in a kiosk style similar to closed Automatic
hyper-realistic mask to steal their identity [11]. This act can be
prevented by different anti-spoofing techniques such as using Teller Machine (ATM) places, making it easy to navigate for
first-time voters while giving them enough privacy when voting.
sensors or dedicated hardware for detecting facial features,
The only difference will be that the EVM kiosk will be lower
challenge-response methods of the user in real-time and
recognition algorithms (specular feature projections, depth and table-like compared to the ATMs to cater to PWDs,
especially those in a wheelchair. This adjustment will also make
feature fusion, image quality assessment, deep learning) [12].
the voters, especially the senior citizens, more comfortable when
The study focuses on an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) voting. As a limitation, blind people are the only PWD excluded
with two authentication methods for authentic, transparent, and from being catered to because including them would yield
credible voting systems. Specifically, the EVM features additional features to be considered, which would cause
biometric authentication combined with face recognition additional expenses and complicated intricacies in the Electronic
authentication that will ensure the credibility of the voting Voting Machine. Compared to the usual voting system of the
system [13]. To completely authenticate the user, an anti- Philippines, using indelible ink after voting will no longer be
spoofing technique will be implemented together with face needed because the implementation is small-scale; the system
recognition to prevent identity theft through facial spoofing. The can check whether the individual has already voted.
technique that will be used is the challenge-response technique, Additionally, voter information and vote counts are saved on a
wherein the user is requested to interact with the system in a cloud database, presuming that there is a sudden and
specific way, such as doing facial expressions or head unprecedented data loss. A receipt will be printed after voting
movements [14]. An EVM is in the form of a portable for transparency and for the voters to ensure that their votes are
standalone tablet kiosk for convenience in voting. A receipt is read correctly. The receipts generated will then be dropped in a
printed after voting for the voters to ensure that their votes are drop box and kept by the committee for manual recounting,
read correctly. The receipt will be put in a drop box, which the especially when there are anomalies or a candidate requests it.
committee keeps for manual recounting in case a candidate files This aspect is another way of preserving data in case of
a petition for it [15]. corruption or loss. This study aims to implement small-scale
voting, such as school body elections and vote-based contests,
This study aims to develop a standalone Electronic Voting using this Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). Specifically, the
Machine (EVM) with two authentication systems. More implementation will occur at our university, The University of
specifically, this electronic voting machine should be able to Mindanao.
recognize and authenticate the fingerprints and faces, supported
by the anti-spoofing technique of the registered users as II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
implemented. This study also aims to perform an effective
voting procedure and accurately count the number of votes from A. Conceptual Framework
the registered users and tally them. Furthermore, the votes The study used Raspberry Pi as the main processing unit of
counted from the system should match the manual vote count the system, which ran the Raspbian operating system. The
from the receipts printed after the voting process. component used was compatible with the Adafruit fingerprint
This study would be of great importance as it will make scanner through its USB. Also, the Python language was used
voting more convenient with the aid of a device that will make for programming because of its compatibility with the libraries
the flow of the electoral process smoother. The Electronic used. The Open Computer Vision Library, or OpenCV, was
Voting Machine (EVM) will be a standalone computer kiosk to widely used for image processing and computer vision projects.
make the voting process ideal for the voters and will not be a Additionally, the library was utilized to build the Haar-Cascade
hassle. The monitor screen used for the voting process will have model for face detection/anti-spoofing and LBPH (Local Binary
bigger fonts to make the on-screen instructions very clear and Pattern Histogram) model for face recognition [8]. Aside from
this, the Pyqt5 library designed the system's graphical user
readable for people, especially senior citizens and those with
poor eyesight. With this, they can vote with little to no effort. interface (GUI).
The EVM will use fingerprint and face authentication features Fig. 1 shows the conceptual framework of the study.
to ensure the authenticity and credibility of the voting process. The system required fingerprint or face acquisition to validate
An anti-spoofing technique with a face recognition feature will the voter's identity for authentication, which was the system’s
be implemented to prevent identity theft through facial spoofing. input. The fingerprint acquired was preprocessed to optimize the
This technique will also prevent fraud as only the voter can sample and extract significant features to find the matched
access their registered account. Moreover, since the voter will fingerprint from the database [15-16]. If the system failed to
be the one to decide which fingerprint (left or right thumb, index, authenticate the registered voter's fingerprint, it proceeded to
face authentication. The system first performed face detection,
increasing the face recognizer's accuracy since it marked the
voter's face before proceeding to recognition. Afterward, the
face recognition algorithm matched the extracted voter's face
from the database. Moreover, the same face detection algorithm
was used for the anti-spoofing procedure. It detected the voter's
eyes and then required them to blink twice to prevent identity
theft. There were two authentication methods, but the voter was
only required to pass one of the biometric authentications before
proceeding to the voting proper, wherein the voter voted for their Fig. 3. LBPH (Local Binary Pattern Histogram)
preferred candidates among the selection and finalized their
votes. Furthermore, this comprised the electronic voting C. Voter’s Registration
machine. Before the election day, people eligible to vote were
registered ahead of time with their personal information, which
included their names and samples for fingerprint and face
recognition, the two methods of authentication for the EVM.
Furthermore, they were given informed consent regarding our
study. As shown in Fig. 4, voters must touch the fingerprint
scanner with their desired finger for authentication. The images
were processed with a highly sensitive pixel amplifier, then
extracted templates that were stored/saved in the database as a
unique ID.
Fig. 1. Conceptual Framework