=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1830/Paper66
|storemode=property
|title=A Framework for Pre and Post Vote Cast Audit to Enhanced Electronic Voting Systems’ Credibility (PsVCF)
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1830/Paper66.pdf
|volume=Vol-1830
|authors=Enesi Femi Aminu,Aliyu Abdulmalik,Hussein Abubakar Zubairu
}}
==A Framework for Pre and Post Vote Cast Audit to Enhanced Electronic Voting Systems’ Credibility (PsVCF)==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1830/Paper66.pdf
International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Its Applications
(ICTA 2016)
Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria
November 28 – 30, 2016
A Framework for Pre and Post Vote Cast Audit to Enhanced Electronic Voting
Systems’ Credibility (PsVCF)
Enesi Femi Aminu1, Aliyu Abdulmalik2, Hussein Abubakar Zubairu3
1,2
Department of Computer Science, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria
3
Department of Information & Media Technology, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria
{1enesifa, 3abu.zubairu} @futminna.edu.ng, 2aliyuabdulmalik57@yahoo.com,
Abstract—A citizen of any democratically practiced nation there individuals who are unscrupulous that can compromise
under the permitted age reserves the legitimate right to vote the system for some gains. Most a time; these set of people
and be voted for. This right is so powerful which needs to be are highly proficient in Information Technology (IT)
guided diligently. Because the functions of this right when knowledge.
carefully used can yield national developments and growths in Election conducts in Nigeria for instance, is attributed
all sense of live. In order to guide this right from all possible with a huge number of issues and challenges [4]; common
human interference and manipulations thus; the introduction among the problems include prolonged legal tussle, missing
of electronic voting machines (eVotingMachines). However, it names of some registered voters, intimidation and
is ascertain that this has not yet yield the expected results.
disfranchisement of voters, multiple and under aged voting,
Because Information Technology (IT) experts, particularly
software designers and engineers are alleged to manipulate the
snatching or destruction of ballot boxes, miscomputation and
system (program) to favor their prefer candidate(s). It is in the falsification of results [2]. As a result of poor electoral
light of this that this paper proposes a pre and post vote cast system in most developing nations, the sizes of electoral
audit framework for electronic voting machines such that mayhem is seriously on the increase, and the political elites
every voter can audit the system before and after voting. This have taken the advantages of this worrisome situation to
will ensure real free and fair vote cast, authentication of vote engage uninformed and poverty ridden youths to indulge in
casted and true results of vote casted. Ultimately, reduces to various electoral violence [5]. In addition, it is also asserted
zero any acts of suspicious and malpractices. that in [6] the syndrome of godfatherism and godson also
forms a factor to electoral violence exploiting the
Keywords-eVotingMachines; pre-vote cast; post-vote cast; weaknesses of the traditional voting system. The collective
audit; credibility; benefitted contestant; party; system. effect of the electoral abnormalities are but not limited to
misuse of incumbency power, lack of lucidity and stern
flawed voter lists; actual or perceived bias of election
I. INTRODUCTION officials resulting to real or perceived fraud stimulate
election related violence with far reaching consequence of
It is a known fact that the words “democracy and
eroding peoples' faith and confidence in democratic process
election” are intervolving. Democracy, a type of government
[7]. Therefore, it is also the view of [8] that if the voting
in which the utmost power is confined to the people which
mechanism and systems are well managed (just as proposed
can be directly applied by them or by their designated
in this paper); it will guarantee good governance based on
representatives under a free electoral system. While, election
rule of law, transparency, and accountability. The remaining
on the other hand is a process in which voters select their
sections of this paper are thus organized as follow. Section II
representatives and express their preferences for the way that
captures the account of some related literatures (studies) of
they will be governed [1]. Poor electoral system is a major
the proposed work; Section III depicts the architectural
cause of unhealthy political competition among power
framework of the proposed pre and post vote cast audit
contenders and consequently leads to electoral violence. It is
which form the pivot of this paper; Section IV implores
ascertain that one of the prime causes of political struggle
some data modeling approaches to further gives a pictorial
amid power contestants and eventually leads to electoral
details of the proposed framework and Section V concluded
hostility is poor electoral system [2].
the work and it recommendations.
In any democratic settings; qualified citizens or
registered voters are expected to guide and respect their
voting right because it is their desire for such right to be II. RELATED STUDIES
given to their intended party or candidate. It is important to The research work carried out by [9], pointed out
note that if the platform designed or adopted to cast and verifiability, fairness, eligibility, privacy, among others as
count vote lacks credibility, unarguably; that will call for so salient characteristics of electronic voting systems. The
many questions and presumptions [3]. It is assumed that authors aimed to develop an electronic voting system that
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International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Its Applications (ICTA 2016)
suite these characteristics of electronic voting process. The Furthermore, [15] developed a real-time e-voting system
system included voting, counting, result announcement in Nigeria with emphasis on security and result veracity.
among others. However, at the counting stage; the voter has Considering the methodology in which the system is
no idea if the vote cast is actually benefited by the targeted implemented which were divided into five main modules for
contestant or party. The final results would only be instance; in the voting module, a voter is expected to register
announced by the counter when the election period of time is and a password is thereby sent to his mail. By implication,
over at the result announcement stage. We argued that such voter is expected to have an existing mail account and
suspected system’s manipulations could still be carried out cost of accessing his mail before a vote is casted must be
by unethical IT experts. incurred. Considering the low level of literacy and the
In the course of this research, a good number of works negative outlook of economy in this part of the world, such
have been carried out on enhancing electronic voting system would by extension discourage and disfranchise so
systems; particularly on security - mainly introduction of many eligible voters. However, in the proposed framework;
biometric for voter’s authentication. This fact was buttress in fingerprint biometric as a means of security is required for
the work of [10]. However, little or no attention is given to voter to register and proceed to execute the vote cast
intended vote cast credibility. activities. Thereby eliminates the cost of signing-in and
Bringing security and authentication like biometric based accessing email account. Besides, avoid any form of account
computer network into electronic voting machines was the hijack by third party. Also, the issue of disenfranchisement
survey work carried by [11]. The researchers emphasis the of eligible voters who are illiterates is completely avoided
significance of Biometric techniques in electronic voting using the proposed method of security.
machines. In their work, they finally propose a biometric- A paper titled “A Simplified Electronic Voting Machine
based design that protects transparency, secrecy, and System” by [16] proposed a transparent operation on the
anonymity as well as other important services. Three system by using unique information and produces the results
different types of authentications in security related were of aggregate casted votes for the contestants.
discussed in their work. They are as follows: “something we The greatest danger to e-voting system is that
know”; this simply mean some sort of personal information. interference on program of the systems can go undetected
For example, Personal Identification Number (PIN), affecting the results of the voting, then an independent and
password (short or long), the second type is “something we extensive security monitoring, auditing, cross checking and
have”; the researchers described this type in form of physical reporting needs to be a critical part of e-voting system [17].
objects for example, token and smart cards and lastly, The work of [18] equally stated that as a result of lack of
“something we are”, a typical example is biometric. This transparency, the use of electronic voting system in some
third type of authentication brings us to the security measure nations who have adopted its usage had equally generated a
we adopted in the research work. The term biometric lot of controversies. The researchers further pointed out that
(fingerprint, iris, face and other passive traits); describe the few years ago; there was an argument that the
science of measurement of creatures [12]. trustworthiness of the system may be achieved by the use of
In the research work of [13], they provided security to backup paper trails. And in contrast; they argued that the
electronic voting system through the means of visual paper trails would not provide the adequate measures but the
cryptography and homomorphic encryption that protect user transparency of the machine could be restore by adopting
authentication by adopting shared construction algorithm. sufficient security measures. They concluded that when
Thus, in summary of their work; a voter is authenticated technology is inaccurately and hastily applied to election, it
before voting take place. The adoption of biometric system can inadvertently give room to so many electoral challenges
of security in this proposed research is further strengthen by and thereby lowering the electorate confidence in the
the authors as stated in their work under review that the exercise. Therefore, the issue is not just adopting electronic
likelihood of two or more users not possessing the same voting system in countries like Nigeria but enhancing the
identification features in the biometric system is clearly not system for electoral confidentiality and credibility is the
daisy. However, auditing process and technique as propose utmost concern; which is what this proposed work is sought
in this paper was not included in their work. to address.
In the proposed system of [14] the work depicts how The need for the proposed framework is justified
mobile phones that are android based are proficient in voting reviewing the work of [19]; where some nefarious actions
system. The system supported concurrent voting as a result that could be carried out by different categories of people.
of distributed nature of the database. In summary, the Among these is where votes could be illegitimately created,
researchers claimed that the proposed new e-voting system deleted or modified by voting device or operating system
ensures voter privacy and voting correctness, hence developers, internet provider or poll worker (with access to
providing a key mechanism that based on distinctive network traffic or storage media). Table 1 shown the
identification number. However, economy and illiteracy summarized list of these nefarious actions (attacks) by
factors among others in developing nations were not taken researchers who done the analysis of Diebold voting system.
into consideration. Besides, android – an open source Other types of attacks discussed were insertion of
platform can easily be manipulated by software engineers to backdoors into operating systems, compiler or loader;
satisfy their negative motives; thereby poses credibility issue insertion of backdoors into codes attacks; attacks on network
to electronic voting system. capabilities of the systems; attacks on the capabilities of
harddisks; and attacks on smart cards.
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International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Its Applications (ICTA 2016)
TABLE I. ATTACKS ON THE SYSTEM [19]
system. Eligible voter is expected to fully register. The
III. THE PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR PRE AND POST biometric device for fingerprint forms core details of the
VOTE CAST AUDIT registration and the details information will automatically
keep in the database (DB). The Administrator (Admin) is
The framework has the administrator (admin.) and the expected to perform some administration tasks such as
voter as shown in Figure1. The Administrator refers to a key registering contestants/parties, voters, responsible to display
staff that is completely saddled with the responsibility of parties or contestants details when the need arise among
monitoring and managing the e-voting system. While the other tasks. Essentially, this framework unlike existing
voter category demands voter to first log-in using a biometric systems, proposes a mechanism where voter can audit the
finger printing device. If the finger print input is confirmed numbers of votes garner by his/her intending contestant only
to be valid by the system, the voter’s details will be before and after his vote to ensure credibility of the vote. In
displayed. the lieu of this; the proposed architecture is described as
three tiers architecture in this paper.
Pre-vote Audit: In this tier, voter is expected to login
using his fingerprint to validate and authenticate his detail
information in the database during registration. Successful
login will affords voter to access the number of votes garner
by his intending contestant/party only before his vote can be
casted. That is; voter cannot access the number of votes
garner by other contestants or parties. This is to ensure
secrecy and data privacy of other parties. Once a voter
accesses a contestant’s numbers of votes; his vote must
automatically be casted for such contestant or party as the
case may be.
Vote: In this mid-tier, a vote is casted and goes to the
secured database of the system. Expectedly, the vote will
definitely cause increment to the relations (database) of
benefited contestant and that of total votes respectively.
Post-vote Audit: In order to avoid and eliminates any
acts of suspicious, the researchers come up with this final tier
(otherwise known as confirmatory tier) of the architecture.
This tier finally confirms and ensures that vote casted goes to
the intending contestant. This tier checkmates vote against
some contemptible acts like causes vote to be miscounted by
tampering with the source codes or configuration; insert
Figure 1. The Proposed Framework
backdoors into codes; among others.
The architecture is further represented in Figure2 using
The blue dotted rectangle represents the graphical user flowchart. Voter is expected to log-in using finger-print
interface (GUI) of the proposed framework for the e-Voting biometric and some other personal details. If the inputs are
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International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Its Applications (ICTA 2016)
correct, a pre-vote audit is expected is expected to be carried being forwarded to the database for onward verification and
out for the intending contestant or party as the case may be. authentication. Once the system authenticates the thumbprint
A vote is casted and equally expected to carry out a post-vote to be valid, a successful message is generated to the system
audit before login out of the system. All these functions to interface. Then, voter can navigate the system to select audit
forestall any forms of despicable acts that could be carried before vote (pre-vote audit) and from the database the system
out by different categories of people especially malicious display the valid number of accredited voters and various
software engineers that can illegitimately set some computer contestant or parties. Once voter select the intending
codes to create, delete or modify vote. contestant/party that will benefit his vote cast, the system
will generates the total number of votes garner by the
contestant and the system will prompt the voter to cast his
vote automatically for that contestant. Thereafter, a post-vote
audit is expected to carry out in order to validate and ensure
that your vote is casted for the intending party; and finally
logs-out.
Figure 2. Representation of the Framework using flowchart
IV. MODELING THE PROPOSED FRAMEWORK USING USE
CASE AND SEQUENCE DIAGRAM
In order to strengthen the aim of this research work and Figure 3. Use Case Modeling of the Proposed Framework
make a strong case for it, the proposed framework is further
represented by using some models: use case model for
Figure3 and sequence model for Figure4. This is because use
V. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
case diagram affords a better model to describe the proposed
functionalities of any new system; and sequence diagram – a It is a known fact that a large number of countries in
unified modeling tool that provides a graphical means of Africa, for example, Nigeria; still uses ballot paper system
depicting objects interactions over time. for election. However, considering the common position of
With the use case diagram in Figure3, the detail the related works reviewed in section II, it is long overdue
functionalities of the administrator in the proposed for country like Nigeria to key-in into this invention called
framework are captured. Among the functionalities during (enhanced) electronic voting system in order to build
requirement analysis are upload: voters, contestants and confidence and credibility for the Electoral College that
political parties details, total number of registered voters. It is would in turn ameliorate electoral violence. Thus, in this
sole responsibility of the administrator to ensure that every research paper, the credibility of electronic voting systems
eligible voters who shown up for the exercise are duly has been extended further by the proposed framework that
registered and ensure to upload their registration details into prospective voter should be able to audit the number of votes
the database. A voter in this context means those that can garner by his/her beneficiary’s contestant or party before and
vote and be voted for. At the end of it, total number of after vote is casted. With this proposed framework, election
registered voters should be made available to the voters. Also result’s credibility is assured; electoral related violence as a
in the case of parties, admin own the duty to equally register result of suspicious feelings are eliminated; malicious
parties accordingly. manipulation of the system by unscrupulous and unethical
The work flow of Figure 4 is as follows: at this point it is information technology experts are firmly monitored. It is
assumed that every eligible voter has duly registered. worth mentioning that pre and post auditing of votes can
Therefore, for vote cast exercise; voter can access the system only be carried by voter strictly on his/her benefitted
by applying thumbprint via a fingerprint detector which is contestant or party. That is; the data privacy of other
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International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Its Applications (ICTA 2016)
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