Taita Taveta University College E-Voting System: A Web Based Approach to Elections Management

Abstract

Most institutions of higher learning such as universities and colleges world over provide for an electioneering process where students elect their union leaders in a democratic manner. This is of great importance as it inculcates the principle of democracy into the students who are at the peak of their learning stage and would need these skills for better statesmanship. Proper management therefore is called for to provide foolproof processes which can be termed as free and fair in the standards of universal democracy and employment of Information Technology is a sure way to realize this. Online voting is the application of web based technologies to the automation of voting processes. In online voting a voter cast their ballot from a remote terminal that is connected to the central database where actual processing of the ballot is done. Online systems have the advantage of providing convenience to the voter and reduce the time wasted in the queuing process at election centers. This paper describes a research carried out at Taita Taveta University College, a higher learning institution in Kenya and the process undertaken to achieve development and deployment of a web based system to promote free and fair democratic electioneering process: computerizing registration, voting and tallying process involved. The system described is in form of a portal that is embedded on the Universities website. The system was developed using the incremental prototyping due to the adaptive nature of web based applications and the system proved that a computerized solution is possible with elimination of human related faults that are a commonplace in employment of human clerks to manage the election process. Integration with SMS functionalities helped increase safety and reliability of the system. Application of the online voting has resulted in many advantages in the efficiency of the entire electioneering process and reduced costs the university used to incur using the human clerk mechanism.