Secure electronic voting

Abstract

Voting is indeed one of the most important features of a free democratic society. The right to exercise free will through voting is being practice for a long time now. Elections are a critical component of any democracy. Elections decide the fate of countries and their citizens, so while the introduction of e‐voting may seem like a natural step in the modern world, it is one that should be taken with caution. Electronic voting thus referred to as e‐voting is gaining more and more public interest. Voting is done, not only for deciding a countries leadership but it is a method of voicing ones opinion hence it is practiced in many organizations including universities and other multinational companies to make various decisions. E‐voting in general refers to any kind of voting in electronic form. Thus e‐voting includes voting by telephone as well as voting machines in voting booths. This project however deals with e‐voting in the sense of voting with the use of an ordinary computer via internet. It is argued that the ease with which voting can be performed will increase participation. However, security cannot be bargained with conveniences. Hence this Electronic system aims to provide a secure mechanism for electronic voting which not only increases the ease of voters but also will keep the system secure. This system will address the issues of integrity, anonymity, registration and authentication in particular. The need to reconcile identification and anonymity, on one hand, and verifiability and anonymity on the other hand will also be addressed. As a result this thesis will discuss an end product that is a web based application for secure e‐voting that is applicable to society elections in MCS. The project can take further enhancement in adding new platform e.g. android application.