ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

OPTION OF ELECTRONIC AND TELECOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

Proposal for iot based electronic

voting machine

Submitted by:

NGEZE Pierre Reg: 18RP01550

TUYIZERE Aimable Reg: 18RP04823

Under guidance and Supervision of;

Claude TUYISENGE

Thierry MAHORO

This advanced diploma project is done for the partial fulfillment of requirements for Advanced diploma in
Electrical and electronics Engineering (IoT based E-Voting machine) at RP-IPRC Gishari, Rwanda.

Gishari, July 2021

 ABSTRACT

In a democratic country, like Rwanda voting is an important way where the citizen
can cast their vote. Usually voting done by casting their vote in polling booth.

As the technology increases, nowadays-electronic voting machine used for casting

vote.

This paper is about an IoT based voting machine with fingerprint verification. The
main aim of this project is to make voting secure using fingerprint verification also
to reduce malpractices.

The details of the voter along with their fingerprint in stored in database. If the
fingerprint matches with the stored fingerprint, the system checks the ID number of
the user and if authenticated, it checks if multiple votes have been casted. If the
fingerprint matching is not correct “Matching failed”, message will be displayed
and if ID number is not correct, then “ID not match” message will be displayed.
The Arduino Uno is the controller used in this project. Fingerprint is used to
authenticate the user. There is at least a slight difference between the fingerprints
of each person. When a malpractice occurs, “Already voted” message will be
displayed. The Arduino IDE is used for programming the board and cloud is used
to display ballot card and to store the result. System provides an alert on
malpractice and only an authorized voter can cast the vote. This project safeguards
the citizen’s right to vote and guarantee fair election.
Contents
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................................ 2
CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 4
1.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 4
1.1 Background of the study ........................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Statement of the problem .............................................................................................................. 5
1.3 Purpose of the study ....................................................................................................................... 5
1.4 Research objectives ......................................................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER TWO: Literature Survey................................................................................................................. 6
2.1 System Working .................................................................................................................................. 7
2.2 Circuit diagram of the system ............................................................................................................. 9
2.3 Hardware Requirement ...................................................................................................................... 9
2.4 Software Requirement ...................................................................................................................... 10
3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 11
4. Further Scope .......................................................................................................................................... 11
References .................................................................................................................................................. 12
CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

Voting is the right of each citizen to cast the vote and select his or her leader. Rwanda is a
democratic country and each citizen has the right to vote and show his or her option. Voting not
done to elect the government leaders, but also conducted to elect the leaders in schools, colleges,
banks, society, etc.

Fingerprint is the biometric used in this project. Fingerprint will be different for each individual.
In this project, fingerprint used for the authentication of the user and allows him to cast vote
based on his fingerprint image

1.1 Background of the study

Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of integrated physical devices that are set with connectors,
actuator and communication media that allow them to send and receive data over the internet .
This technology is simplifying the lives of people and making everything easier day by day in
every walk of life. The use of IoT in elections also improves the voting procedures. Formerly when
the concept of IoT was not introduced, people faced lot of problems for voting in elections. In the
traditional ballot based elections, the voters have to cast their vote to select nominated candidates.
In this process voters have to deposit their ballot papers in the sealed boxes which are distributed
across different polling stations. At the end of election process, all the boxes are opened and the
counting of the votes is done under the supervision of a certified officer . But the process of
counting votes needs to be transparent which is not possible in the paper based process of elections,
so that’s why internet voting has become very popular in modern era of technology. It uses the
electronic means to solve the problems and chores of traditional methodology of voting process.
Once the officer was being bribed by the one of candidate they can change result of election.
Biometric technology is the most widely accepted and mature biometric method and is the easiest
to Deploy and for a higher level of security and prevent the fraud at the time of election process.
Using biometric identifiers offers several advantages over traditional and current methods in
means of enhancing the security for election system for both voters & candidate.
a Biometric authentication can be further divided into some different biometric options i.e.
Fingerprint scanning, Face recognition, Iris scanning etc. But here we are introducing new
technology which works the technology fingerprint recognition system and IoT technology.
It is simple to install and also it takes little time and effort to acquire one’s fingerprint with a
fingerprint identification device. Thus, fingerprint recognition is considered among the least
intrusive of All biometric verification techniques. Though fingerprint images are initially captured,
the images are not stored anywhere in the system. Instead, the fingerprints are converted to
templates from which the original fingerprints Cannot be recreated; hence no misuse of system is
possible and also Biometric technology provides strong and indisputable authentication Because
biometrics data are unique It is through the pattern of these ridges and valleys that a unique fingerprint
is matched for verification and authorization. These unique fingerprint traits are termed “minutiae” and
comparisons are made based on these traits (Maltoni, Maio, Jain, & Prabhakar, 2009)., cannot be shared,
cannot be copied and cannot be lost.

1.2 Statement of the problem

Traditionally voting was done by marking with stamp casting vote for the corresponding
candidate and then dropping the paper to a ballot box. To calculate the number of vote each vote
must be calculated in each ballot box and then sum all the votes for each candidate and candidate
who secured largest vote will be selected as the winner. Therefore, it will take more time to
declare the elected person. Voter needs to carry his ID card for verification. The presiding officer
will check with the list and ID card for verifying of the voter. This is time consuming. The All
this process was done manually and. After voting each voter will be marked with ink in their
finger in-order to prevent voting again. In addition, this whole process may include forgery vote.

1.3 Purpose of the study

In this project we develop a system which prevents the malpractices occurring during election.
Fingerprint of each candidate eligible for voting is enrolled and saved in the system. It provides
verification of the voter, checks whether that voter has voted more than one time for the same
election. The result will be also stored in the cloud. Which allows the voter to vote from
anywhere without where she/he has been registered.
1.4 Research objectives
 To increase confidentiality of the voter’s information.
 To save time for the election due to use of biomedical.
 To save money used while government and institute are using paper based election.
 To access nearest voting machine during election period.
 To provide sound production of notifying the guiders for circumstance related to multiple
accession of voting machine.

CHAPTER TWO: Literature Survey

The functional block diagram of the IoT based voting machine with fingerprint verification
consist of controller, fingerprint module, Wi-Fi module, keypad, power supply and a cloud. The
controller used in this system is Arduino Uno. Power given to the system from the laptop.
Keypad is used to poll the vote. Message regarding the system instructions and any malpractice
will be displayed on the serial monitor.

Fingerprint module is used to place the finger; it is used to store the database of the voter’s
fingerprint. Fingerprint module identifies the fingerprint of each user with the fingerprint in the
database and displays a message if it belongs to an authenticated person. It will give the result of
matching on the serial monitor. The ballot paper of the voting is stored on the cloud. The final
count of each candidate is stored in different field in the cloud. Here, thing speak is used to store
the final count obtained by the candidate.

ESP8266 is used to provide Wi-Fi to the controller. Buzzer is used as an alert when a person
votes for the second time. Here they are divided into two units’ finger-print unit and voting unit.

The figure 3.1 shows the block diagram of verification unit. It mainly deals with the enrolling
and matching. It consists of the fingerprint module which is used for store the fingerprint of the
voter and checks with the database for matching. Here the finger number of the voter is also
stored. The system also verifies the finger number of users stored in the database. System checks
whether that person tries to cast his vote more than once. Buzzer is used to alert when second
voting occurs.
Figure 3.2 shows the voting procedure. When a message occurs in the fingerprint unit that person
is eligible to cast vote, then he can cast vote through this unit. After voting a register will be
incremented. The voters can choose the place where they want to vote. Voting is done through
the ThingSpeak using keypad. Finally result can be obtained in the serial monitor of the Arduino.

2.1 System Working

First the voter should enroll his ID number and fingerprint. During the process of voting, it
checks with enrolled data if it matches, then check if there exists any previous entry against that
user. If that voter has voted before, “Already voted” message will appear along with a buzzer
alarm. If not voted before, he can cast his vote through ThingSpeak where he select his native
place and cast vote and a register will be incremented. Then at the end of the voting, the result
can be obtained.
2.2 Circuit diagram of the system

2.3 Hardware Requirement

Fingerprint Sensor: Fingerprint Module consists of optical fingerprint sensor, high-speed DSP
processor, highperformance fingerprint alignment algorithm, high-capacity FLASH chips and
other hardware and software composition, stable performance, simple structure, with fingerprint
entry, image processing, fingerprint matching, search and template storage and other functions.
Fingerprint module has two interface TTL UART and USB2.0, USB2.0 interface are often
connected to the computer; RS232 interface may be a TTL level, the default baud is 57600, can
be changed, ask a communication protocol, microcontroller, like ARM, DSP and other serial
devices with a connection, 3.3V- 5V microcontroller are often connected directly.
Figure 3.4 Fingerprint module
ESP8266: ESP8266 is Wi-Fi enabled system on chip (SoC) module. It is mostly used for
development of IoT (Internet of Things) embedded applications. It employs a 32-bit RISC CPU.
It has a 64 KB boot ROM, 64 KB instruction RAM and 96 KB data RAM. External flash
memory can be accessed through SPI. ESP8266 module is low cost standalone wireless
transceiver which will be used for end-point IoT developments. To communicate with the
ESP8266 module, microcontroller must use set of AT commands. Microcontroller communicates
with ESP8266-01 module using UART having specified baud.

2.4 Software Requirement

Arduino Ide:
The Arduino Integrated Development Environment - or Arduino Software (IDE) - contains a text
editor for writing code, a message area, a text console, a toolbar with buttons for common
functions and a series of menus. It connects to the Arduino and Genuino hardware to upload
programs and communicate with them. Programs written using Arduino Software (IDE) are
called sketches. These sketches are written in the text editor and are saved with the file
extension. ino. The editor has features for cutting/pasting and for searching/replacing text. The
message area gives feedback while saving and exporting and also displays errors. The console
displays text output by the Arduino Software (IDE), including complete error messages and other
information. The bottom right hand corner of the window displays the configured board and
serial port. The toolbar buttons allow verifying and uploading programs, creating, opening, and
saving sketches, and opening the serial monitor.
PHP:
PHP is server side scripting language that is embedded in HTML. It is used to manage dynamic
content, databases, session tracking, even build entire e-commerce sites. It is integrated with a
number of popular databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and
Microsoft SQL Server.

MySQL:
MySQL is relational database management system based on SQL-Structured Query Language.
The application is used for a wide range of purpose, including data warehousing, e-commerce,
and logging applications. The most common use for MySQL however, is for the purpose of
database.

3. Conclusion

The concept proposed here is a voting system based on IoT. As Rwanda is a democratic country,
all the citizens have the right to choose a person to lead them. World is becoming completely
digitized. As a part of digitization, here voting is also digitized. One of the benefits of this project
is that it reduces the time taken to announce the result. Here, the system is made more secure by
introducing biometric and finger number verification. This system allows one person to vote only
once. Multiple voting is not allowed. This system can be used for postal voting also.

4. Further Scope

This method of voting helps to make voting more secure. Postal voting can also be made secured
by using IoT based voting. This system allows voting from anywhere in the world. This system
requires less time for getting result than the current methods used. The controller with more
memory helps in storing more information. Security can be improved by adding more biometrics
such as face; iris, etc. By enhancing online security, we can make the system fully automatic.
 References

[Anandaraj 2015] Anandaraj S, Anish R, Devakumar P.V, “Secured electronic voting machine
using biometric”. IEEE, 2015 International Conference on Innovations in Information,
Embedded and Communication Systems, .19-20 March 2015
[Ashok 2012] D. Ashok Kumar, T. Ummal Sariba Begum Department of Computer Science,
Government Arts, College,” Electronic voting machine, International Conference on Pattern
Recognition, IEEE, Salem, Tamilnadu, India, 21-23 March 2012.
[Huzaifa 2017] Huzaifa Ahmed, M. R. N. Biplob, Md. Abdur Rahman, Rahil Rezwan, S. M.
Shuvo, “Biometrically Secured Electronic Voting Machine,” 2017 IEEE Region 10
Humanitarian Technology Conference (R10-HTC), Dhaka, Bangladesh. 21 - 23 Dec 2017.
[Murali Prasad 2016] R. Murali Prasad, Madhu Nakirekanti, Polaiah Bojja, “AADHAR based
Electronic voting Machine using Arduino”. International Journal of Computer Applications
(0975-8887) Volume 145 - No.12,