COLLEGE OF INFORMATICS

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

Project Title: Online voting management system in Ethiopian election for
National Electoral Board of Ethiopia

Group Members

1. Awoke Alemu……………………….….…GUE/00011/12
2. Dessie Andargew………………….……...GUE/01199/12
3. Abaynesh Mekonen…………….………. GUE/00068/12
4. Ekiram Abdulkadir ………………………...GUE/00027/12
5. Mandie Asmare ……………………………… GUE/00045/12

Advisor :-Mr Kibret Zewdu

 March 2024
Gondar, Ethiopia

Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................2
Background of the organization..................................................................................................................2
Background of the project...........................................................................................................................3
Statement of the problem...........................................................................................................................4
General Objectives......................................................................................................................................4
Methodology For the project......................................................................................................................5
Data collection mechanisms..................................................................................................................5
Scope of the project....................................................................................................................................5
Limitations of project..................................................................................................................................6
Requirement Tools......................................................................................................................................6
Feasibility Analysis.......................................................................................................................................7
Technical feasibility.................................................................................................................................7
Financial Feasibility..................................................................................................................................7
Resources Feasibility...............................................................................................................................7
Risk assessment...........................................................................................................................................7
Security of Online Voting.........................................................................................................................8
 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the organization
The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) is an independent organization established by
Article 102 of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Since its
establishment, the Board has organized different branch offices at both the federal and regional
levels including the two administrative cities.
Under the current constitution, Ethiopia conducts local, regional, and federal elections. The
NEBE has conducted six national elections, two local elections, and nine referendums. At the
federal level, Ethiopia elects a legislature. The Federal Parliamentary Assembly has two
chambers: the House of People's Representatives with not more than 550 members as per the
constitution but actually 547 members, elected for five-year terms in single-seat constituencies;
and the Council of House of Federation with 117 members, one each from the 22 minority
nationalities, and one from each professional sector of its remaining nationalities, designated by
the regional councils, which may elect them themselves or through popular elections. Since
January 2019, to reform NEBE, the House of Peoples’ Representatives enacted a new
proclamation that reduced the management board to five members who serve full time for six
years

Introduction of project
The development of science and technology has led to make life more comfortable than in older
Days. For a democratic nation, elections are the pillar. As the elections evolved, the loopholes
also evolved it, and also in the name of election the resources are being abused. In the name of
election the resources are being spent. Keeping the voter machine after voting needs a high level
of protection and requires a lot of money, army people are being used to safeguard the voting
machine. The loopholes include faking the count, making a fake vote using other voter IDs,
changing the voting box and so on. These are all the problems which are being seen in the
existing method, to overcome these problems we are proposing a new system. Democracy is
intended to allow people to vote freely, and every citizen of a democratic country has the right to
vote.
The democratic government is dependent on the election results. Over the last several decades,
the voting system has seen numerous significant modifications, from traditional paper ballot
voting to electronic voting, and now to internet voting. Every system seeks to close the gaps left
by the preceding one. This project's main purpose is to replace the traditional voting method with
the recently proposed voting systems. We take voter photos as input and train a facial recognition
model using this dataset to ensure the security of the voting system. Voters' faces are recognized
by the trained model, which ensures that they only vote once.

Voters can electronically submit their votes to election officials from any location through
electronic voting. Election officials are responsible for collecting votes from voters. Electronic
voting can save time and effort with high efficiency and flexibility, which is gaining more and
more attention as an alternative to traditional voting. With the growth of the Internet, electronic
voting has become an important tool for many organizations. The primary goal of this system is
to guarantee that elections are conducted ethically.

Statement of the problem

Representatives are chosen through the electoral process in a democracy. The people who run the
nation on behalf of the people are these representatives. As a result, it is necessary to compute
the vote results precisely. Based on our historical records, there were security issues with the
manual voting procedure. Apart from that, the manual voting process has additional issues.
• Speed - Hand counting votes are time consuming.
• Access – Disable people who cannot easily reach polling booths
• Security_ The current voting system is highly unsecured for chatting and faking the count
• Transparent – Can easily manipulate election results.
• Resource_ It takes a lot of manpower and resources to conduct the election
• Cost – Different types of expenses throughout the manual voting process such as voter
registration cost, vote counting cost and so on.
When considering all over the world, lots of online voting systems have been used now.
However political electoral systems are rarely used because of several issues. Most African
countries including Ethiopia still use manual voting processes because of a lack of technology
and skilled human resources.
General Objectives
The general objective of this project is to develop online voting system for Ethiopian Electoral
board
Specific objectives
For developing the new system that is referred in the general objective, first we should identify
the specific objectives of the project; which makes the general objective applicable.

 To increase suitability of election process

 To improve truthfulness of voting result

 To reduce greater voter crowd

 To make Environmental friendly election

 To reduce costs of election system

 To design the system architecture of the proposed system.

 Implementation of the face recognition system
 Testing how the system works under a variety of conditions
 To conduct full deployment system.
 Preparing documentation about the system

Methodology For the project

Data collection mechanisms
Data collection methods are the most important part of our project to find the main requirements
of a system and how to understand the system. Information is one of the major requirements to
accomplish our project from different mechanisms to gather information we prefer the following
methods, as we think as they used us to collect the major information. These are:-
1. Interview:-To determine the objective and scope of the system we have interviewed election
board employees and some responsible employees for handling the election system.

2 .Document analysis: - Since the current manual system has paper works we will also analyze
those documents to fit our project.
3. Observation: - we have observed the working environment to assure those requests gathered
using the interview and existing document stated above.

Scope of the project

The online voting system is a web based system that provides an electronic way to vote
molding. Main features of this program can be listed as follows.
 An administrative dashboard
 An election officer dashboard
 Register voters
 Registered voter login
 Update/Delete Voters
 Register Political Party
 Update/Delete Political Party
 Register Candidate
 Update/Delete Candidate
 Voting process
 Check/Display Results
 Generate Reports

Limitations of project
The scope of the system is limited to parliament the election. This system does not covers
presidential and other elections. Our project does not include local election. Providing login
password via SMS consider as secure as initial development. It uses or works in English
Language only available for user who can only understand English. [Why not]

Significance of the project

The significance of implementing an online voting system lies in its potential to modernize and
improve the electoral process, offering several benefits compared to traditional voting methods.
Here are some key points highlighting the significance of an online voting system project:
For voters
  Accessibility: Online voting makes it easier for eligible voters to participate in elections
regardless of their location or physical mobility. This accessibility can lead to increased
voter turnout and participation, promoting democratic values.
 Inclusivity: Online voting systems can be designed with accessibility features to
accommodate voters with disabilities, ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to
participate in elections.

For Electoral board

 Cost Savings: Conducting elections online can significantly reduce the resources spent on
organizing and managing traditional polling stations. This includes savings on printing
ballots, staffing polling stations, and transportation costs.
 Real-Time Results: Online voting systems can provide real-time updates on election
results, allowing stakeholders and the public to access outcome data promptly. This
transparency fosters trust in the electoral process and enhances accountability.
 Security Measures: While security is a critical aspect of online voting, implementing
robust encryption, authentication mechanisms, audit trails, and cyber security protocols
can enhance the security of the voting system, making it resistant to fraud and
manipulation
For candidates
 Efficiency and Accuracy: Automated processes in online voting systems help reduce
human errors in ballot counting and result tabulation. This improves the overall accuracy
and integrity of the electoral process, minimizing the risk of discrepancies and disputes.
 Adaptability to Modern Technology: Embracing online voting aligns with the digital
transformation trend, leveraging modern technology solutions to enhance democratic
processes and meet the expectations of citizens.
In conclusion, the implementation of an online voting system project is significant due to its
potential to improve accessibility, efficiency, transparency, and inclusivity in electoral processes
while leveraging technological advancements for democratic governance. However, it's essential
to address security concerns, ensure regulatory compliance, and conduct thorough testing and
validation to maximize the benefits and trustworthiness of such systems.
Requirement Tools
While developing this online voting system, it is needed to consider technical aspect. Some of
the technical tools and technologies are listed below.
 PHP
 My Sql
 HTML
 CSS
 Python (CNN)
 Net Beans IDE
 SMS gateway
 Reporting Tools
Most of the tools and technologies mentioned above are freely available. Initially this web
application runs on the local host. So it is clear that this online voting system technically feasible

Feasibility Analysis
Feasibility Analysis is used to investigate the feasibility of proposed system in multiple
dimensions. It used to indicate whether the system is feasible or not. Our system can be seen
according to the following literals.

Technical feasibility
In technical feasibility, we should state that our new system can be implemented with current
technology. The system will be technically feasible because the technical resources needed to
develop, install, and operate are available in the present infrastructure. So our system is
technically feasible because we used the most familiar and user friendly tools to make the system
used easily. Besides this, our system will include Help support and Guidance for new users to
easily interact and use the system.

Financial Feasibility
When designing web application, it is needed to consider web hosting cost. Since the system
should access the voters in given period of time (may be within 12 hours 50 million population)
the system required high bandwidth for the operations of the application. This system is critical
system so the cost for security and maintenance will be high. Besides associated cost there will
be many benefits for all citizens of our country. Because using this system, election cost can be
reduced greatly. So it is clear that this online voting system financially feasible.

Resources Feasibility
The most important aspect of feasibility study is, consider the resources that needed while
developing the software product. Main resources needed for this system developments are listed
as follows.
 Programming device (Laptop or desktop)
 Programming tools (freely available)
 Smart mobile phone

Risk assessment
It is necessary to identify all the requirements in the early stages. The requirements change only
if new functions added to the system. The system designed for all voters so this system design
while maintaining user friendly graphic user interface.

Security of Online Voting

Foreign experience revealed that they are often confronted by security issues while the online
voting system is running. The origin of the security issues was due to not only outsider such as
voters and attackers but also insider such as system developers and administrators, even just
because the inheritance of some objects in the source code is unsuitable. These errors caused the
voting system to crash. The proposed solutions were correspondingly outlined to hold back these
attacks. For example, to avoid hacker making incursion into the voting system via network, we
can design our system to transmit data without network.