Model for a mobile phone voting system for South Africa
Okuthe P. Kogeda, Noluntu Mpekoa · 2013
Voting is a widely spread and democratic way of making decisions. For centuries, South Africa has been using the popular paper-based voting system, which does not provide the desirable blend of accessibility and efficiency. Missing ballot papers, invalid votes and miscount are some of the challenges associated with the paper-based voting system. Time is precious to everyone and correct information is even more precious in the fast-paced information technology era. Merging all these together we look for easier, effective, efficient and time managing way of casting a vote. Mobile phones facilitate communication and rapid access to information and their diffusion has reached a larger proportion of the population in a short period of time. When such a device is available why not use it for a time saving, cost effective, secured method of casting a vote. Mobile phone voting has the capability to augment the participation rate and the quality of voting. This paper proposes designing and developing a mobile voting system, which allows users to spontaneously vote timeously using existing mobile phone networks and technologies via their mobile phones. We used Visual studio 2010 for front end and MySQL database in developing the system. We conducted usability testing, which showed 93% of participants saying it is easy of use, 100% of participants said it is easy to learn. The system was efficient, reliable, and accessible and secure as attested by participants.