A Study of Internet Voting for the Elections of Universities in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Most institutions of higher learning such as universities and colleges world over provide for an electioneering process where students elect their union leaders in a democratic manner. This is of great importance as it inculcates the principle of democracy into the students who are at the peak of their learning stage and would need these skills for better statesmanship. In the past, people go to polling place and take the blank ballots, then punch a hole or append the seal. If the seal is not clear enough, or the vote is damaged by soiling, it may bring some debate on the result. In order to resolve these situations, the technology of electronic voting (E-voting) comes into existence. Proper management therefore is called for to provide fool proof processes which can be termed as free and fair in the standards of universal democracy and employment of Information Technology (IT) is a sure way to realize this. This research carried out at USJP (University of Sri Jayewardenepura) and the process undertaken to achieve development and deployment of a web based system to promote free and fair democratic electioneering process: computerizing registration, voting and tallying process involved. The system was developed using the incremental prototyping due to the adaptive nature of web based applications and the system proved that a computerized solution is possible with elimination of human related faults that are a commonplace in employment of human clerks to manage the election process. Integration with short message service (SMS) functionalities helped increase safety and reliability of the system. Application of the online voting has resulted in many advantages in the efficiency of the entire electioneering process and reduced costs the university used to incur using the human clerk.