A Framework for the Adoption of Electronic Voting System in Nigeria

Abstract

Elections allow the general public to choose leaders directly or indirectly and express preferred way on how they are governed. Elections represent the highest level of democracy where citizens choose their leaders and representatives. The integrity of the election process is fundamental to the integrity of democracy [5]. The election system must sufficiently be robust to withstand a variety of fraudulent behaviors and must be transparent and comprehensive for voters and candidates to accept results of elections [19]. The objective of the paper is present an implementable model consisting of use case and activity diagrams that can be used to implement e-voting system in developing countries using Nigeria as case study. Despite the partly e-voting system implementation in Nigeria, some challenges were encountered in the voting process such as slow application response, high rate of biometric rejection during capturing and poor picture quality of the voters. The study was undertaken with a view to improve the voting system by highlighting the key processes and interactive tools involves during e-voting; hardware options and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) required for the e-voting system. The paper is a model design that uses Unified Modeling Language (UML) techniques for the design approach. Two (2) components of UML were specifically used to present the models. Microsoft Visio is used for designing the models. The design models are capable of handling electronic voter registration, verification, casting, collation, counting and presentation of results. The paper recommends that governments and electoral bodies should improve computer literacy rate among citizens due to technophobia that exists within them, security standard and integrity of the system should be properly maintained by electoral bodies in order to have more confidence and independent of the system, and further research can be conducted towards implementation of the designed models. I. INTRODUCTION Voting system (manual or computerized) must be understandable and usable by the entire voting population regardless of stage, weakness, or disability. The system must be resistant to prevent wide range of attacks which include ballot filling by voters and incorrect tallying by insiders. In the third World countries particularly the African continent, the use of electronic voting is at its infancy; this is as a result of technological backwardness and other social and economic problems of underdevelopment. Electronic voting system is underway in South Africa; and in Nigeria the use of e-voting is presently being advocated both by the experts and the non-experts with a view of reducing electoral fraud and corruption associated with the electoral processes [1][2]. History has shown that most elections in Nigeria were manipulated in order to influence outcome. There have been reported cases of delay in delivering election materials to the polling units as well as alteration of results on transit to the collation centers. In fact, results have been reported to be written without elections been held. This has been attributed to poor and bad electoral system. It has also been reported that other factors that contribute to the problems of election in Nigeria include the confusion about the registration process, inability to get to a registration point, inadequate ballots papers, lack of proper identity documents, inadequate staff, and political intimidation [1]. Long queues, inadequate privacy, fear of intimidation, victimization and security are also challenges in Nigeria's electoral process. Some of the problems associated with the existing voting system in Nigeria from 2015 election are: there is a high rate of rejection of fingerprints during the capture of biometric recognitions process which in most cases attributed to low quality of finger print scanner. Poor picture quality resulting to inadequate biometric verification was also a problem. The design objective is to design models of an electronic voting system that would help reduce mistakes, election fraud, and to facilitate free and fair election in Nigeria. The designed models will show how the system would interact with its users. Models are various processes or stages that are being selected for the development of a project or system depending on the requirements and goals of the system. Several tools may be used to create software models; typical among them is Unified Modeling Language (UML). The use of models for different software design has been reported by several researchers [3][4][5][6].