Voting System Argumentative

Introduction

A voting system or electoral system is a method by which voters make a choice between options, often in an election. A voting system enforces rules to ensure valid voting, and how votes are counted and aggregated to yield a final result. The word “vote” means to choose from a list, to elect or to determine. The main goal of voting is to come up with leaders of the student’s choice, in order this to happen, the voting system is needed. Voting system can help a lot in this matter. This system will serve as a guide to the proper flow of the voting event. Today, the voting system is widely known and used in almost all schools who exercise their right to vote specially in electing school officers. In voting system, a user can use his or her voting right. He/she has to be registered first in order to vote. Registration is mainly done by the administrator, for security reasons. After being registered by the administrator the voter is given a secret voter code which he/she can use to

access the system. If invalid/wrong details are submitted, then the citizen is not registered to vote and the system will not permit that person to vote.

Project Context

This project focuses on studying the current voting system and approach in Central Philippine State University –Victorias Campus. The recipients of this project are the school organizations. The proponents proposed this project in order to improve the current voting system in the said campus. They will be implementing an automated voting system of FLP-SSG in Central Philippine State University –Victorias Campus. The counting of votes will be automated as well as filling up the names of the candidate.

Purpose and Description

This project entitled “FLP-SSG Automated Voting System of CPSU –Victorias Campus” is intended to enhance the current or existing voting system of the school campus and also to develop a computerized voting system that will help them to lessen the time consumed and to ensure safe-keeping of the information files. The project researchers and the recipient believe that the automation of the said system will help them a lot. The Election officers/staff. This automated voting system provides easy counting of vote since it is automatically counting the vote after the voters submit its form. This system can also have officials to ensure safe keeping of records. This system can also provide information that are saved if being query or needed. This will also lessen the time concern in voting event. The Student: This system will help the student to lessen the time consume in voting process. This will also provide to have an easy and smooth processing of election.

Objectives

General Objective

To provide an automated system that will help the recipient to solve the problems they are encountering.

Specific Objective

It will be reviewing the existing current voting process or approach in CPSU –Victorias University Campus. It will also validate the system to ensure that only legible voters are allowed to vote and to ensure the safe keeping tracks of all records. Cases of vote miscounts shall also be solved since at the back-end of this system resides a well-developed database which can provide the correct data if needed.

Scope and Limitation

Scope

It is focused on studying the voting system of CPSU Victorias campus and to make sure that the students vote is counted, for fairness in the elective position. The system will produce less labor intensive and also less paperless works. Increasing number of voters as individuals will find it easier and more convenient to vote. It will also ensure that the members who are registered are the only ones to vote. Improvement in voting services to the voters through fast, timely and convenient voting. It requires less number of staff during the election. Limitation

The system is intended to be used only in CPSU – Victorias University Campus. The system does not support online voting. Since this will be the first time that the school will use an automated voting system, the officials will have to demonstrate first how to use the system since not all the students are able to use it properly specially to those who have less knowledge in computers.

Definition of Terms

FLP – Future Leadership of the Philippines
SSG – Supreme Student Government
Administrator – A person that has a powerful access to the system

CHAPTER II

Review of Related Literature

FOREIGN LITERATURE

A voting system or electoral system is a method by which voters make a choice between options, often in an election. Many researchers have done work in the voting system. Academians like Peter Neumann focus on the immensity of the problem one faces when trying to design and implement a truly secure voting system. Neumann gives a list of suggestions for “generic voting criteria” which suggests that a voting system should be so hard to tamper with and so resistant to failure that no commercial system is likely ever to meet the requirements, and developing a suitable custom system would be extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive. Voting system must produce human-readable hardcopy paper results, which can be verified by the voter before the vote is cast, and manually recounted later if necessary.

Many voting systems uses equipments and theses equipments are divided into 5 types. 1. Paper- based voting: The voter gets a blank ballot and use a pen or a marker to indicate he want to vote for which candidate. Hand-counted ballots is a time and labor consuming process but it is easy to manufactured paper ballots and the ballots can be retained for verifying, this type is still the most common way to vote. 2. Lever voting machine: Level machine is peculiar equipment, and each lever is assigned for a corresponding candidate. The voter pulls the lever to poll for his favorite candidate. The kind of voting machine can count up the ballots automatically. Because its interface is not user-friendly enough, hiving some training to voters is necessary. 3. Direct recording electronic voting machine: This type, which is abbreviated to DRE, integrates with keyboard: touch screen, or buttons for the voter press to poll.

Some of them lay in voting records and counting the votes is very quickly. But the other DRE without keep voting records are doubted about its accuracy. 4. Punch card: the voter uses metallic hole-punch to punch a hole on the blank ballot. It can count votes automatically, but if the voter’s perforation is incomplete, the result is probably determined wrongfully. 5. Optical voting machine: after each voter fills a circle correspond to their favorite candidate on the blank ballot, this machine selects the darkest mark on each ballot for the vote then computes the total result. This kind of machine counts up ballots rapidly. However, if the voter fills over the circle, it will lead to the error result of optical-scan. (http://www.slideshare.net/wilsonnandasaba/project-report-voting-system

LOCAL LITERATURE

Automated Elections implemented in Baguio (University of Cordilleras).Winners were already known right after the last vote was cast during an automated election at the University of the Cordilleras (UC-BCF). Four of its colleges utilized a computerized system during the Supreme Student Government (SSG) Elections last July 24,2007 while the Supreme Court is still settling the P1.3 billion worth computerization issues on the 2007 elections, the UC-BCF has proven that automation of elections is plausible. The automated poll system was created under the supervision of Engr. Eliseo Ruiz of the College of Information and Computing Sciences (CICS).”At first it was a stand-alone system when developed and used in 1997, but in 1999, we were able to implement a network system for it,” said Engr. Ruiz. CICS was certified by the Commission on Higher Education as the Center of Development for Excellence (CODE) for Information Technology. UC-CICS has been sharing the program to other colleges for the past four years.

This 2006, engineering, accountancy and nursing students were able to benefit from the automation process. “All the students did was input their student ID number and click beside the name of their chosen candidate, “said SSG Adviser Mr. Benjamin Alo, who also disclosed that the system was safe. To avoid flying voters, student ID access numbers were automatically blocked upon voting. Votes were automatically tallied (http://www.uc-bcf.edu.ph/Students/News?Category=Students&NewsID=17) LOCAL SYSTEM

Mindanao State University – SSC Voting System
Author: Jelly Ann Echavez, Philip Cesar Garay, ArbieRatunil
For many years since this University founded, this institution had already conducted many major university student council election of officers for the MSUN Supreme Student Council. It was so evident unfortunately that the turnover of these said elections had turned to be slow and tiresome. It was slow because of the following scenarios: 1.) The Election is done manually, so the canvassing is consuming a big amount of time, in fact in most of the elections the canvassing of votes took a long hours and more time consume. 2.) Miscount of votes that may cause for under vote or otherwise over vote. 3.) Mistally and misstated vote for a candidate. It was hard and tiresome on the part of the election facilitators because it needs a lot of energy and time to overcome the complexity of the preparations and the holding of the election down to the canvassing of votes. So with these problems the call for a change is considered.

Since this University adapted many new courses and one of these courses is Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. As a student in this course there is a call and a need for reformation and revitalization of the existing traditional and manual voting system. The implementation of the computerized voting system is the answer for this chaos. Rationale This project was founded and created to replace the existing manual voting system that had produced inconvenience not only to the voters but also to the election facilitators. 1.) The system is responsible of determining the authenticity of the voter except for his/her studentID and password. 2.) The list of courses is already predefined in the system upon when voter or student is registered. 3.) Candidates’ record after the election will be saved and will be manually deleted on the system. 4.) Student that officially registered as voter can only vote. 5.) The system is created with a security level, passwords of some system services are implemented.

6.) A candidate must first apply as candidate before registering as a voter. 7.) This system was configured for standalone PC’s only. The need to design and make a computerized voting system may be able to conduct the election in a fast, correct, and convenient way and to achieve good and accuracy in its results. Hypothesis of the study Computerized voting systems are widely used in elections. This paper describes using a computerized voting system as the basis for a project in an Information Technology course. Through the formulation of this system the students are indeed confident that the whole electoral process will not only be fast and quick but most of all accurate and precise. Significance of the study It is the concern of the researchers to build a computerized voting system that will be used by the Supreme Student Council of MSU at Naawan. It will help to eliminate frauds and maneuvers in canvassing considering that the computer will be the one to count the votes. (http://www.sourcecodester.com/microsoft-access/msu-n-computerized-voting-system.html)

FOREIGN SYSTEM

Midlands Technical College – SSC Voting Syst This is the VOTE PLUS management software developed in vb.net. It is mainly done for the college purpose especially in Midlands Technical College. All the candidates’ names of the different section will be displayed in the screen according to their post. Students have to just go and click the button to vote. Calculation of the vote is done automatically which can be viewed only to the Admin. The winners name will be shown in the screen and even the votes they have gained. So this software can be used for the college voting sake, where there will be complete security, and the time to count the votes will be saved, because of the automatic calculation.

CHAPTER III
SSG ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

Organization Adviser – Approved or disapproved the proposed plan of the SSG organization.
Suggest a suggestion that will enhance the proposal. Executive Committee – Execute all rules, ordinances, memoranda, laws and resolutions passed by the Council and Senate.Serve as the vehicle of student government in asking concessions from the administration for the benefit of the students.Present plans of activities to the administrations and coordinates with the school authorities in carrying out such plans and programs specially involving student’s participation, once enacted by the Council and duly approved by the University President. President – Overall in charge of SSG.Together with other EXECOM officials they test the resolution being submitted by Legislative Committee. Vice-President – Take the responsibility if the president is not around. Senators – Test the correctness of the resolution.

Legislative Body – to pass resolutions, rules and regulations aimed for the betterment of the students.Deliberate on proposed plans and budget on student activities presented to the Council by the SSG President. Sectors and General Assembly – Render proper guidance to the officers of the organization.

Act as intermediaries between SSG and Administration.
Help the SSG in carrying out the plans for the school year. FLP ORGANIZATIONAL CHART
Organization Adviser –Evaluate the resolution.
Approved or disapproved the resolution.
Enhance the resolution for the better if needed.
President – Presiding Officer of FLP.
Test the correctness of the resolution.
Overall in charge of the organization..
Vice President – Take the responsibility if the president is not around Secretary – Keep records of minutes of the meeting.
Business Manager – Transacts business/ prepares the materials any paraphernalia during the activities and meeting of the organization. PRO – Provides information about the activities of the organization and coordinates to subchapters of the organization / collect information about the future activities. Auditor – audit / mine the proper accounting and auditing procedures to avoid excessive / extravagant expenditure of the organization. Treasurer – Keep the records of the fund of the organization. Sentinel – Peace officer / help the business manager welcome the visitors. Muse – Gives entertainment to the organization during meeting.

Workflow of FLP-SSG Voting System

CHAPTER IV
METHODOLOGY

All research is based on some underlying philosophical assumptions about what constitutes ‘valid’ research and which research method(s) is/are appropriate for the development of the system in a given proposal. In order to conduct and evaluate any research, it is therefore important to know what these assumptions are. This chapter discusses the philosophical assumptions and also the design strategies underpinning this research study. Common assumptions were reviewed and presented; the interpretive paradigm was identified for the framework of the study. In addition, the chapter discusses the research methodologies, and design used in the study including strategies, instruments, and data collection and analysis methods, while explaining the stages and processes involved in the study. The proponents are responsible for the task given. Interview is done in order to gather helpful information. The proponents will developed an automated voting system for the recipient. This system development will last until first week of October 2014.

REQUIREMENT SPECIFICATION

The system that we develop can reduce or removed the errors that as being encountered in the current system. The system will also provide user friendly interface and easy to operate for the user. The developed system is capable also of safe keeping track of records and can adopt to the current system the recipient is using.

PIECES EVALUATION FRAMEWORK

The proponents test the developed system in order to know the functionality and stability of the system. Table 1.

Performance

The existing system is experiencing the difficulty in terms of time consumed in preparing for the election process and also in the time consumed in polling services.

Information

Lack of some information
The recipient is using the traditional process of voting event. There are much information that are not filled up especially by the candidates and also in voters information.

Economy

In using the current system the election officials is spending money for the papers they are needed as well as for the printing of their ballots.

Controls/Security

The current system is depending only in the officials as their security in the event also in securing the secrecy of the ballots.

Efficiency

The existing system uses a lot of extra materials such as papers that will serve as ballots.

Service

The current system needs more officials in order to operate the event and the currents system is not capable of taking the voting event in a short time.

CAUSE AND EFFECT ANALYSIS
Table 2

Problems/Opportunities

Cause and Effect
System Objectives
System Constraints

Time – Consuming and Laborious Process

C-Due to many number of students

E-A lot of time consumed in polling or canvassing process.

Automate the voting and polling process
The system is capable only of saving information about the students and also in automated counting of votes and generating report to it.

Some students don’t even know who the candidates are.
C-Some students are not interested in knowing even the face of the candidates

E-they are coming up with random choice in choosing their candidate.

Provide pictures of every candidates

The system will provide only picture of the candidate only

Lot of papers to be needed

C-due to number of voters

E-The officials spent money in order to provide those papers

Provide paperless work in term of ballots.
The system provides paperless work in actual voting only.

Security Issues and confidentiality of votes

C-Some officials may manipulate the polling process

E-mislead to not correct proclamation of winners

Developed a secured database as well as automatic counting of votes

The system is developed will well secured and organized database

Lots of effort and officials needed
C-Many works should be done in preparations and in voting event.

Automate the voting process
The system is limited only in voting and saving information of students.

FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Interface Requirements
*Fields have specific data to be input it is either character, numeric or alphanumeric.
*Can generate report of the needed information if queried
Business Requirements
*Fields should be filled –up before a process can be proceed. *.Clicking the submit button will proceed to the next process that the voting process will go. *The voting officials and the voters should be well-trained in order to use the system effectively. Regulatory/Compliance Requirements

*The system limits the accessibility of the users according to their role. Security Requirements
*Member of the voters group can only vote and cannot access other functions of the system.
*Member of the Administrators group can modify or update the specific record.
*The system comes with secured database

NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENT
Security
*Log-in requirements – Voters/Administrators
*Invalid Password Counter- 3 failed attempts lead to system lock. (Admin only) Performance
*Processing Time – the system is able to perform the task in a short time (often in 3-5 seconds depending on the response of the user). *Query and Reporting Time – the system is able to respond right after the query is done. *Capacity – the system is able to handle much number of transactions depending to the user of the system. *Storage – the system is able to handle lot of data depending on the capacity of the storage location. Availability

*Hours of Operation – it is available anytime of the day
*Location of the Operation – the system only in CPSU-Victorias City Campus. Reliability
*Mean Time Between Failures – Once a year
*Mean Time to Recovery – maximum of 1 hour depending to the failure. Recovery
*Recovery Process – By restoring the system database to previous time.
*Recovery Time Scale – the recovery will take 2-3 minutes
*Back-up Frequencies – the data should be back-up regularly.
*Back-up Generations – The back-up database is needed in order to restore the system to previous instance. Compatibility
*Compatibility on Different Operating System – the system is able to run in Microsoft Windows Operating System *Compatibility on Different Platforms – this system is able to work in Intel Dual-Core Processor or higher processors. Usability

*Look and Feel Standards – the system is using dim and light colors that will be appealing to the senses of the user and also it has some keyboard shortcuts that will help the user for easy used of the system. *Internationalization/Localization Requirements – The system is using English language, freestyle – Spelling, US-Default keyboard and Short Size bond paper.

DESIGN OF SYSTEM SOFTWARE

In this documentation we will show the different processes and flows of the data that occurred in the current system as well as the flow of process and data also in the proposed system. HEIRARCHICAL INPUT- OUTPUT

In this figure it shows what is the flow of process that occurring in the voting system.

Figure 4. Hierarchical Input – Process – Output

INPUT-PROCESS-OUTPUT
In this figure it shows the process of input as well as the output
of the transactions in the system.

Figure 5. Input-Process-Output

MANUAL FLOWCHART

The manual flow chart shows the flow of the process from the start until the end of the system.

Flow Chart for Applying as a Candidate

Figure 6.0 Current Flowchart for applying as a Candidate

Flow Chart of Voting Process

Figure 6.1 Current Flow Chart of Voting Process
PROPOSED FLOW CHART

It shows the flow of the proposed system from the start until the end.

Flow Chart for Applying as a Candidate

Figure 7.0 Proposed Flow Chart

Figure 7.1 Proposed Flow Chart

CURRENT DATAFLOW DIAGRAM
It shows the flow of the data within the system.

Current Data Flow Diagram for Applying as a Candidate

Figure 8.0 Current Data Flow Diagram

Current Data Flow Diagram for Voting Process

Figure 8.1 Current Data Flow Diagram

PROPOSED DATA FLOW DIAGRAM

This diagram shows the flow of data in the proposed system.

DATA FLOW DIAGRAM FOR APPLYING AS A CANDIDATE

PROPOSED DATA FLOW DIAGRAM FOR VOTING PROCESS

ENTITY RELATIONSHIP DIAGRAM
This diagram shows the relationship between the entities that are present in the system.

DEVELOPING AND TESTING

The system was developed with Visual Basic 6.0 as the programming language and Microsoft Access as the storage database. The proponents used a laptop with specification of Intel ® Celeron –CPU 1000M @ 1.80 GHz of processor, 2GB of RAM and Windows 8.1 32bit operating system. The proponents is also the developer of the system. The system is being test with the other laptops, desktop and seems to function very well. We test it in Windows XP Professional Edition (32 bit) with specification of Intel Dual Core® processor, 1 GB of RAM and 256MB of VGA card. We also test it in Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (64 bit) and also function it very well. The recipients also test the system and approved it. IMPLEMENTATION RESULT

Here is the result of the implementation and testing made by the recipient/clients/end users. The client was contented to the functions of the system and they are willing to use it. The summary of the result of rate made by the client is shown in the table below.

Table 3. Summary Table of the System Evaluation

Particulars

Results of Evaluation

User – Friendly

Easy to manipulate by the users and provide user-friendly graphic user interface

Accuracy

The system can finish transactions faster and accurate in result

Reliability

The system is reliable because it is automated and can finish the process in short period of time

Security

The system is fully secured since it has a password that only authorized user can access the system and also the database have a password that prevent other people in modifying the information directly to the database.

CHAPTER V

RECOMMENDATIONS

IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

The proponents will train the users first by using the system before the election. We will have a demonstration to the election officers on how to use the system. After that, the election officers will be the one who is responsible for demonstrating on how to use the system for the voters with the guide of the proponents.

The recipient will use the system for the upcoming election event. During the first time that the election will take place using the proposed system the proponents will be on guide to the voters and the election officers. The needed materials should be ready before the election event.

The system will be evaluated each and after the election process. The proponents is also open for the recommendations of the needed features that will help more to the both election officers and the users. We will also advise to the election officer to have a backup of the database of the system. BUDGET RECOMMENDATION

The budget needed for the system is not a big money. The system is capable of running to different platforms of hardware specification that is widely available to the market. Below is the summary of the budget recommended in table form.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RUIZ, ELISEO 2007. Published thesis documentation in the internet from the
University of Cordilleras proved that the automated election is effective and reliable instead of the manual election. Echavez, Jelly Ann 2008. A published thesis documentation in the internet from the Mindanao State University. It is proven that the manual process is very tiresome while automated process is easy to handle and execute. NEUMAN, PETER 2003. Generic Voting Criteria: Adapting the flow of technology can make our way better. Willson Adasaba Publishers, Ukraine MIDLANDS TECHNICAL COLLEGE, Better technology, better result: A publish research in the internet form Midlands Technical College. SLIDESHARE.NET 2003. Automated Voting System. Available at http://www.slideshare.net Retrieved on August 25, 2000.