Development of Electoral Process System to Leverage COVID-19 Pandemic Risks

Abstract

The electoral process has had challenges in policy as a result of large number of competitive elective positions and COVID-19 pandemic risks. In mitigating these challenges, there is need to incorporate innovations of Information and Communication Technologies in the electoral process so as to have confidence in the electoral management bodies that have always been blamed for the failure of delivering credible and timely election every election cycle that have in many instances resulted into violation of the electoral laws and guidelines that have led to violence in some selected counties. In this research project the emphasis was on investigating the problems and challenges associated with the past electoral process systems that were identified as the ineffective tallying of votes and delay of the elections results in some regions that have vast geographical coverage and/or poor network infrastructure coverage. The analysis is carried on the collected facts and design of the system done that evolve prototype that would lead to improvement in provision of electoral process services. The prototype developed manages the tasks that include registration, appointments, polling, tallying, equipment, suppliers, payments and employees. In insecurity, threats are reduced by enforcement of the encryption and access of only authorized pages as a security measure for emerging threats. The spiral development methodology is adapted in the electoral process system development phases.