E-Voting Technology

Presented By:

Gautam Kumar

2K13/CO/050

-The Future Of democracy

Introduction• Choosing Leaders is one activity that is carried out in every society. In today’s

world, most leaders are chosen not by appointment but usually by election.

• Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an electorate to make adecision or express an opinion—often following discussions, debates, or electioncampaigns. It is often found in Democracies and Republics.

• So how do we vote?Basically We have two types of voting systems

1. Traditional voting system inefficient Takes time and human resources. Does not give an instant Poll result. Hard to track who voted and who don’t

2. Online or E-Voting System Instant Poll result Easy to keep track of voters Use of Internet

What Is E-Voting Technology?

• To understand E-Voting Technology, first of all we should understand what is e-voting?

SO WHAT IS E-VOTING?Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is a term encompassing several different types of voting,embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes.

E-Voting Technology• E-Voting technology is a web based application in which voter can use his\her voting right online without

any difficulty.

• He\She has to fill a registration form to register himself\herself. All the entries is checked by the DATABASE which has already all information about the voter.

• If all the entries are correct then a USER ID and PASSWORD is given to the voter, by using that ID and PASSWORD he\she can use his\her vote.

• If conditions are wrong then that entry will be discarded

Types Of E-Voting• E-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of governmental or

independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic voting machines located at polling stations);

• Remote E-Voting where voting is performed within the voter's sole influence, and is not physically supervised by representatives of governmental authorities (e.g. voting from one's personal computer, mobile phone, television via the internet) i.eI-Voting.

Different Types Of E-Voting System:

In 21st century many different types of E-Voting System have evolved:

They are as follows:

Paper-based electronic voting system

Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting system

Public network DRE voting system

How It is Performed?

Phases Of Online VotingVoters’ registration

Authentication

Election Result

Votes’ counting

Voting and votes’ saving

Votes’ managing

1. A poll worker hands you a Personal Electronic Ballot that contains a chip storing the ballot you need. Machines by other companies put the ballot on a smart card.

2. You take the PEB to a voting booth and slide it into a slot in an IVotronic machine, activating it for voting.

3. The IVotronic steps you through the electronic ballot, letting you make your choices in each race and review your votes.

4. You press the big red Vote button, storing your votes in triplicate in the IVotronic's internal NVRAM (Non-Volatile Random Access Memory) banks.Many states will require a voter-verified paper trail in future elections. You'll look at a printout of your vote behind a glass or plastic barrier; then you'll press a button to accept it, or reject it and start over.

5. Every hour or so, election judges manually add the totals from each machine to make sure the number of votes matches the number of voters who have come in.6. At the close of polls, election judges print out final tallies from each machine and load them into a master PEB unit.7. Election judges post a printout of the local results, transmit them to a special PC at election headquarters over an encrypted telephone line, and later deliver the master PEB and printouts in person.8. In case of a recount or dispute, your vote is stored in several places: in triplicate on the voting machine, on the printout from the voting machine, on the master PEB, and on computers at your local precinct and at election headquarters.9. All records are destroyed according to state or local law after a specified number of days. Destruction is the final security check--it prevents the vote from being tampered with while it's in storage.

Technologies Used:

• A Voting machine is the combination of electromechanical, mechanical or electronic

equipment which includes its software, firmware and the required documentation to program

control and support equipment which is used to count and cast votes, defined ballots, to

display or report election result and to produce and maintain audit trail information. This

machine is able to provide the voter immediate feedback such possible problem as

overvoting or undervoting which will result in a spoiled ballot. This machine has different

levels of security, usability, accuracy and efficiency.

• Most e-voting machines use similar procedures, with variations in the secure media used to

activate the machines and the procedures for retrieving votes. All e-voting machines include

backup batteries, so they can run for a few hours during a power outage. Votes stay in

nonvolatile RAM, so they aren't lost if the batteries die. See "E-Voting Machine Spec

Check" for information on the guts of different machines.

• To report results, most systems collect votes onto one voting machine or PC at the polling

place. That machine then dials in to a PC at election headquarters and transfers that

precinct's tallies over an encrypted modem-to-modem connection. Later, poll workers

deliver the memory cards along with a printout of the results.

• The PCs used to collect and transmit results aren't supposed to be connected to the Internet

while tallying results.

How To Do It Better?Biometrics can be sorted into two classes:

Physiological: Examples - face, fingerprints, hand geometry and iris Recognition, dna.

Behavioral: Examples-signature and voice.

Prior to the use of Internet or other forms of biometrics, there exists other means of carrying out a voting process, namely

Manual Voting: This is the type of voting whereby voters get registered, be authenticated, obtain and mark their ballot papers, and deliver them to a ballot box. The use of VIN is applied here.

Electronic Voting: Here the use of a microcontroller-based device is applied. Below is a typical example of an electronic voting device.

Online Voting: This employs the use of internet to carry out voting in real time.

Cryptographic verification

The concept of election verifiability through cryptographic solutions has emerged in the academic literature to introduce transparency and trust in electronic voting systems. It allows

voters and election observers to verify that votes have been recorded, tallied and declared correctly, in a manner independent from the hardware and software running the election. Three aspects of verifiability are considered: individual, universal, and eligibility. Individual verifiability

allows a voter to check that her own vote is included in the election outcome, universal verifiability allows voters or election observers to check that the election outcome corresponds to the votes cast, and eligibility verifiability allows voters and observers to check that each vote

in the election outcome was cast by a uniquely registered voter.

Hardware and software requirement

Minimum Software Requirement

Operating System : WindowsTechnology : Java/J2EE (JDBC,

servlets,jsp)Web Technologies : Html, JavaScript, CSSIDE : Netbeans IDEWeb Server : TomcatDatabase : OracleSoftware’s : J2SDK1.5, Tomcat 5.5

Hardware requirements:Hardware : Pentium based systems with a

minimum of P5RAM : 256MB (minimum)

USE CASE DIAGRAM FOR ELECTION COMMISSIONER

USE CASE DIAGRAM FOR VOTER

Advantages Of E-Voting Technology

• Saved Ballot Templates eliminate the need to configure elections from scratch. Just do it once, then save that ballot configuration, and in subsequent years, specify only the names of the candidates.

• Reduced costs are enjoyed when the expenses of printing, mailing and tabulating paper ballots are lessened or even eliminated entirely from the election process.

• Email Solicitation adds value by soliciting an email address from voters without one already on record and then notifying you about the newly-acquired email so it may be added to your master records.

• Email Reminders help increase voter participation by sending reminders to voters who’ve not voted and providing them with a link straight to the online ballot.

• Email Validation brings added value to your online election by inspecting your voters’ email addresses and notifying you of any that are not properly formatted.

• Ballot Scrubbing ensures no ballot is spoiled due to anything not in compliance with your voting rules by notifying voters, in plain-language, about how to ensure their ballot conforms to those rules.

• Ballot Shuffling randomly orders the candidates’ names on each request of the ballot so all candidates get a fair chance at prime name placement on the ballot.

• On-demand Paper Ballots simplify hybrid elections by allowing an election administrator to generate a voter-specific paper ballot that honors all the election settings just as web ballots do.

• Automated Tallying removes human fallibility from the tabulation process and makes your election results available within seconds of the close of the election.

• Comprehensive Reporting instantly provides you with informative day-by-day statistics about your election beyond just who won, demonstrated at the Sample Election Results page.

• Archived Election Results means all previous election results are readily available at your account which saves you from having to dig through a file cabinet to find results from previous elections.

• Ability to correct mistakes allows voters to go back and correct any mistakes before final submission of their ballot. Once a ballot has been submitted however, it is final and can not be altered.

•Disadvantages• Vulnerability to hacking: According to the Congressional Research Service of Election Reform

and Electronic Voting Systems, vendors and election jurisdictions generally state that they do not transmit election results from precincts via the internet, but they may transmit them via a direct modem connection or Virtual Private Network (VPN).

• Voter verified paper audit trails: All fully-electronic (touch screen, DRE, internet) voting systems are subject to the limitations and risks of computer technology. This includes the inability to detect the presence of hardware and/or software that could be used, deliberately or inadvertently, to alter election outcomes.

• Susceptibility to fraud: Voting fraud is not either present everywhere or absent everywhere. Especially in our country, there have always been allegations of fraud by all the losing political parties. Fraud comes in degrees and increments. A malicious voting system created and distributed by one vendor to hundreds of thousands of polling booths, can systematically falsify millions of votes.

• Malicious software programming: Any computer software is basically generated from software programming and coding. And all these softwares could be tampered with by a computer programmer who knows the source code. Testing electronic voting systems for security problems, especially if they were intentionally introduced and concealed, is basically impossible. If malicious coding is inserted by programmers into commercial software that are triggered by obscure combinations of commands and keystrokes via the computer keyboard, then election results can change completely.

• Physical security of machines: Regarding physical hardware controls, many of the DRE (direct recording electronic voting machine) models under examination contained weaknesses in controls designed to protect the system.

• Secure storage of cast votes: The votes that are cast using the electronic voting machines, are stored in a safe storage or space in the computer machine memory.

ConclusionPolls are the biggest festival of democracy. It is the need of the hour to increase more and more people’s participation in our polls. E-Voting is the technology through which we can achieve it. It is seen that in countries where voting is done through electronic means have larger voting percentage than the countries where voting is done through ballot. For example, India’s voting percentage has increased after the introduction of ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES. It can further be increased if we become more technically sound and promote voting through internet via mobile, laptops etc.I believe that a transition to new technologies, especially in a country which is particularly cautious towards new technologies in the polling stations requires a multi-disciplinary approach that allows taking into account not only the usability requirements of the voters, but also those non-functional requirements that help guaranteeing security and build trust on the new voting machines.With E-Voting we can decrease man power, military movement for security purpose, transport expenses, counting time and most importantly we can save lots and lots of time. We can ensure that the right person represent us at the grandest stage of them all i.e. at the parliament.However, Initial cost of installation and cyber threats are some of the disadvantages of E-Voting. But given the advantage it will give us nullify these issues.

So finally I would conclude on this note that BREAK THE LINE AND ENTER ONLINE.That’s why; I believe that E-Voting Technology is the future of democracy.Lastly, I would like to mention this quote by Abraham Lincoln “The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” DO PRACTICE YOUR VOTING RIGHT IN ELECTIONS.

References

Books

• Pressman, R.S.1997, Software Engineering – A practitioner’s

approach, 4th edn, McGraw Hill, International.

• Stallings, W.1999, Cryptography and Network Security, 2nd

edition, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

Sites:

http://www.bravenewballot.org/: http://www.pcworld.com/article/115608/article.html https://www.evoting.nsdl.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machines http://www.techhive.com/article/2013461/electoral-tech-how-e-voting-

has-evolved.html http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/e-voting-electronic-voting

THANK YOU