Biometric-based Voters Identity Management to Combat Impersonation Vulnerability for A Credible E-Voting Process in Nigeria

Abstract

Today, democracy has become a de facto standard of every form of government in the world, nations and organizations. People are given the power to vote for candidates of their choice to represent them in offices. These require that elections are organized in a manner that is unbiased, fair and free of manipulations. This is because confidence can only be gained and the results generally accepted if the electorate sees the electoral process as being transparent, accurate and fair. Although Information and Communication Technology is being applied during the Nigerian electoral process, the process is yet to be efficient, transparent and trustworthy. Nigerian elections are marred with violence, voters' fraud such as rigging, impersonation, multiple voting and vote count falsification. These are seen as threats to the integrity of the election process. The major cause is the lack of strong security measures in place to keep these activities under check. Therefore, in this research, a possible solution is offer to the challenges faced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) today in conducting a credible e-voting process in Nigeria. In this research work, a framework was designed for managing voters' identity for credible elections and electronic voting in Nigeria. The objective was to protect the electoral system integrity by ensuring that an eligible voter has one registration and vote only once for a candidate in an election. The approach was by collecting potential voters' information during the voter registration exercise and the actual identification of voters on Election Day in a real-time mode using biometric as authentication factor. In addition and as a proof of concept, this research implemented a web-based system prototype for INEC that demonstrate the effective operation of our idea. The system was tested and the results obtained showed an improved and credible electoral process through ICT application.