An electronic secure voting system based on automatic paper ballot reading

Abstract

A secret and secure ballot is the core of every democracy. We all feel proud of being able to decide the future of our countries by making appropriate use of our right to vote in an election. However, how can we improve the efficiency of the voting process? Democratic governments should have mechanisms which ensure the integrity, security and privacy of its citizens at the polls during an election process. This paper describes a new electronic secure voting system, based on automatic paper ballot reading, which can be utilized to offer efficient help to officials and party representatives during elections. It presents how the system is organized, it also describes our OCR system and how it is implemented to read paper ballots, and it ends showing some experimental results. © Springer-Verlag 2004.