DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM

ABSTRACT

Voting is method through which the people of a given country elect their representative into different political offices and e-voting is a system through which IT-driven software is us to enhance the voting system. This study developed for implementation the IT-driven voting, otherwise known as e-voting system. The purpose of this study is to discuss the challenges as limitations to the current electoral system in Nigeria’s democracy, proposed possible way forward with the aim to provide a viable option that would ensure credible, fair and genuinely acceptable elections in the country.The flawed electoral process of the last Presidential elections equally calls for technology- enabled solutions to this social malaise which could lead to chaos and anarchy if nothing is done to forestall these electoral menace in upcoming elections. This study discusses the design and implementation of an electronic voting system with database application of WAMP SERVER. It also discusses the issues of selecting appropriate database model, interface design, system deployment and maintenance. The Programming language used in developing this application is Visual Basic.net 2012. It runs in Windows 98 to Latest windows 8.Finally an electronic voting system was design for implementation is this study

Background of the Study
Electronic voting technology can include punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including self-contained direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE). It can also involve transmission of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet.
Electronic voting technology can speed the counting of ballots, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. However, there has been contention, especially in the United States, that electronic voting, especially DRE voting, could facilitate electoral fraud and may not be fully auditable. In addition, electronic voting has been criticized as unnecessary and expensive to introduce. Several countries have cancelled e-voting systems or decided against a large-scale rollout, notably the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (Kaplan,1954).

Bribery is another cancan worm that has eaten deep into the electoral system, a lot of people are involve in collecting gratification from the politicians thereby selling their conscience and their votes, it is due to the fact that the economic situation is not stable, there is a lot of people dying of hunger and starvation in our communities, this is common in the past election most people even go to the extent of tumb printing on ballot papers throughout the night when official voting as not started, this is a cardinal point of rigging an election using the INEC officials to supply voting materials to top politicians in a particular area, hence a resident electoral commissioner of INEC would visit a big name (Politician) in its territory of jurisdiction as a mark of loyalty to pave way for smooth flow of their corrupt tendency perpetuated at the pulls (Ugiagbe, 2011).

Toggeries is rampant in the aspect of our youths, today most politicians have tugs whom they use to disrupt election and steal ballot boxes from pulling stations, this are jobless youths who are trying to earn a living from dubious antecedents, these are the same youths who they use in carrying out their nefarious activities ranging from political rallies, political assassination etcetera. The masses are appealing to such youth to desist from their evil way and turn a new leaf otherwise nemesis will cash up with them, most of the time this same politicians use and dump such youth, it is high time for us to protect our votes and work ceaselessly to protect our nascent democracy. The country can be reduced or even eliminated this problem with the introduction of the e-voting system.