COMPUTERIZED VOTING SYSTEM OF THE STUDENT COUNCIL ORGANIZATION OF REDEEMING GRACE LEARNING CENTER

Faculty of Computer Studies Department Cavite State University Imus Campus Imus, Cavite

In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the subject ITEC55B System Analysis and Design

Rina E. Tabamo Jayson Philbert Ted C. Maaol Joshua B. Tabal

October 2012 Acknowledgement Foremost, the researchers would like to express the sincere gratitude to all those people who give their time to help in making this thesis study. Thank you to the administrator of Redeeming Grace Learning Center, Ms. Valerie Hufano Insigne for allowing the researchers to conduct an interview in their school. Besides to that, the researchers would also like to say thank you to Mr. Jason Edward Hilario for the continuous support in helping the researcher to develop their proposed system. The researchers would also like to thank their beloved professors especially Mr. Ricky Tepora for teaching the researchers how to use visual basic programming language connecting to the database, for his advice and encouragement throughout the course of this thesis. And to Mr. Vonn Romel Garido for correcting the grammar and correcting the construction of sentence. And also Mr.Paul Sarreal for teaching the researchers the format and criticizing the documents. The researchers take this opportunity to acknowledge the people behind the tutorials in YouTube and lastly a big thanks to the family, friends, classmates, and teachers, thank you.

Abstract This project was founded and created to replace the existing manual voting system of Redeeming Grace Learning Center (RGLC) that had produced inconvenience not only to the voters but also to the election facilitators. The researchers goal was to develop a secure, fast, accurate, user-friendly system for a small scale election. The system is designed solely and is limited for the student Council election of RGLC and could append instantly voters and candidates. The researcher used the methodology called V-model because it fits the way they conduct their research. It involves seven stages which are (1) requirement specification, (2) software analysis, (3) software design, (4) coding, (5) software design testing, (6) user feedback and (7) operation and maintenance. Computerized voting systems are widely used in elections. This paper describes using a computerized voting system as the basis for a project in an Information Technology course. Through the formulation of this system the students are indeed confident that the whole electoral process will not only be fast and quick but most of all accurate and precise.

Table of Contents Page Acknowledgement Abstract . Chapter1 Introduction . Statement of the Problem . Significance of the Study .. Objectives of the Study .. Time and Place of the Study . Scope and Limitation .. Operational Definition of Terms Chapter2 Review of Related Literature . Chapter3 Methodology . Research Design .. System Design .. 14 14-16 16-18
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2 3

6-7 7 7-8 8 8 8-9 9-10

11-13

Data Gathering Procedure and Data Analysis ......... Research Instruments . System Requirements . Appendix Fish Bone Diagram . Context Flow Diagram Data Flow Diagram . Normalization .. Entity Relationship Diagram . Flow Chart Gantt Chart ..

18-19 19 19-20

21-22 22 23 24 24 25 25

Chapter 1 Introduction A computerized voting system comprising single or multiple voting stations for controlling and being a voting station simultaneously. The voting system includes an integrated pointing device with graphical user interface for displaying the ballots. The voting stations may or may not be interconnected and indeed may operate as a single unit as a complete polling station. (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6799723.html) The Student Council elections have always been a yearly activity for every school. It is an activity wherein each student is required to choose from a set of candidates who will represent each position in the Student Council. In order for the student to accomplish this, the student must go through several processes. After all the votes have been cast, the voting procedure goes again through several processes. The votes are collected and are then counted, which could take several hours to several days, depending on the volume of votes. In present generation, people became more literate especially with the use of computers. Technologies emerged to introduce many different ways of advancement. Computer machines are of these. Computers now in existence are the most powerful machines than can almost do anything in peoples lives. Hence, the proponent has decided to propose a system to improve the existing manual voting system. Redeeming Grace Learning Center (RGLC) is one of the schools who still implementing manual process in their election of student council where the positions are Student Head, Assistant Student Head, Secretary, Treasurer, 5 Senators, and 4 Ambassadors. Redeeming Grace Learning Center has been successfully operated as a private Christian School since 1997. It was organize to establish, operate and administer an educational institution. The proponent aims to convert the existing manual system of RGLC into a computerized voting system that will help them to lessen the time of their voting
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process. It also provides security for the voter and the system both internal and external. The external security system may be controlled by the controllers in the voting area while the internal security system operates independently. The proposed system will also make their election hassle free, especially to the teachers or administrator who counts the vote of the students one by one.

Statement of the Problem 1. A manual voting requires an accurate count of votes in able to know the results of the winning candidate after the voting process. The results of manual voting came into question due to several factors regarding human error and miscount of votes. How to ensure the accuracy in counting of votes in voting system of Redeeming Grace Learning Center in order to be more reliable? 2. Many of the traditional problems faced in manual voting revolve around security issues. Tallying and transmission of result are the root of unintended errors. How to secure the integrity of the votes of the student? 3. It takes a lot of time in voting manually because the student needs to write down their chosen candidate, and it is hassle for the teachers/administrator to count the votes of the student one by one. Hence, it is very time consuming. How to lessen the time of gathering of the results without counting manually? Significance of the Study The proposed system will help the Redeeming Grace Learning Center in their voting system and will lead them to the development of their Student Council Organization in conducting an election. The proposed system will help to eliminate frauds and maneuvers in canvassing considering that the computer will be the one to count the votes. It will also give convenience to those people who will use the proposed system like the students and especially to the facilitators in terms of time consumption, reliability issues and hassles.
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The study can also help in the part of the researchers to boost insights and information in developing a system for their future studies. The researchers will also benefit from their study in improving their skills, knowledge and academic performance in writing a thesis. The proposed study will also benefits and help the future researcher as their guide in conducting a research about voting system of an organization, and how to develop software. The proponents are also open in development of this study. Objectives of the Study General Objectives: This project was founded and created to replace the existing manual voting system that had produced inconvenience not only to the voters but also to the election facilitators. Our goal was to develop a secure, fast, accurate, userfriendly system for a small scale election. Specific Objectives: To implement a fast, easy and systematic way of conducting a voters registration and candidate applications. To properly manage the election in a well organized manner. To secure the integrity of votes of the student. To generate quickly a correct, accurate and reliable canvassing result. To generate instantly needed summarized and accomplishment reports.

Time and Place of the Study The study commenced on August 2012 until the first week of October 2012 in the Cavite State University-College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Imus Cavite (CvSU-CBE). Interview was conducted at Redeeming Grace Learning Center in Bacoor, Cavite.

Scope and Limitation of the Study The proposed system includes login for administrator and login for the students. The Admin has the only rights to access the administration area and authorized to access the transaction such as adding, editing, and deleting of information inside the system. The students will login as voter. The system is designed with a user security access level and it is responsible of determining the authenticity of the voter by his/her given student id number and password. Student that officially registered as voter can only vote once. The system would be responsible for counting the votes and has the capability to release required reports regarding the list of voters, candidates and canvassing of results. Candidate records after the election will be saved and can be manually deleted by the administrator. The researchers used a programming language called Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6) because VB6 is more simple and user-friendly programming application software that can be easily understood by the beneficiary. The system is designed solely for the student council election of Redeeming Grace Learning Center and could append instantly voters and candidates. It is not applicable in other student council election because the running positions were not the same. Operational Definition of Terms Administrator - One who administers or manage the voting system. Beneficiary - in the broadest sense is a natural person or other legal entity who receives money or other benefits from a benefactor. Candidate - one that aspires to or is nominated or qualified for running in a certain position. The candidate must be a student from RGLC. Canvass- to examine in detail; specifically : to examine (votes) officially for authenticity.

Computerized- To enter, process, or store (information) in a computer or system of computers. Context Diagram(level 0 dataflow diagram)- A data flow diagram that document the system's boundaries by highlighting its sources and destinations. Data Flow- Data in motion. Data Flow Diagram- A logical model of the flow of data through a system. Database - is the container were the files will be stored. Entity Relationship Diagram- is an abstract way to describe a database. Nomination - is part of the process of selecting a candidate. Normalization- is the process of organizing the fields and tables of a relational database to minimize redundancy and dependency. Technology - is the scientific method and or materials used to achieve a commercial industrial objective. Visual Basic - is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is known for its COM programming model. VB is also considered a relatively easy to learn and use programming language, because of its graphical development features and BASIC heritage. Voting Area - This area pertains to the form inside the system. This is the area where the voting process happens.

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Chapter 2 Review of Related Literature The review of related literature for this thesis involves local and foreign literature either in books, previous school lessons, websites and other forms of media that helps us formulate in analyzing the system that is fitted for the school and its students. The review focuses on a number of different literatures that is related in the system. It helps us get ideas and it became the researchers basis on how to start the documents to analyze the current voting system of Redeeming Grace Learning Center.

Local Literature

College Student Council Voting System for Pangasinan State University Bayambang-Campus (Cayabyab,2008) The College Student Council Voting System was software designed primarily for developing election applications. It was simple software, because it managed to secure the ballots and performed quick counterbalance. It was designed to take us through the novice user of the proposed system and it is designed as user friendly environment to know abruptly the command or syntax of the software and user will have not to invest their time and effort to learn it.

Lucky 3 Voting System Mindanao State University (Echavez, Garay, Ratunil 2010) Their voting system is composed of a well secured and user-friendly system that makes their Student Council reliable.

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Their system creates a more level playing field for political parties their candidates and it even gives a chance for independent candidates to take on veteran players, this ultimately leads to a more dynamic and vibrant studentpolitics in Mindanao State University.

Inocencio V. Ferrer Memorial School of Fisheries Automated Voting System (Soledad, Lamis, Valenzuela 2010) Their voting system is seemingly simple, and its advantages scream out at you. If implemented without hitches, it allows for fast, virtually instantaneous tabulation of votes.

Foreign Literature

University of Leeds electronic voting system http://www.sddu.leeds.ac.uk/online_resources/evoting/ The main advantage of interactive voting is that it supports instantaneous, anonymous (as well as known) interaction between the presenter and the audience. As a result, lectures become livelier, the presenter can easily stay aware of how well the audience has grasped the ideas he or she has been communicating, and both the presenter and the audience can receive instant feedback from each other. The e-voting system most widely available at the University of Leeds currently is produced by eInstruction. Their system used to be called InterWrite PRS (Personal Response System), but they upgrade their system into a more advance version. Trent University ayePoll On-line Voting System
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SoftworksDev Engineering Team (Bila, Cakalli, Harrington, Harrington, Rosco 2005) It is a web based system that facilitates the running of elections and surveys online. This system has been developed by SoftworksDev to simplify the process of organizing elections and make it convenient for voters to vote remotely from their home computers while taking into consideration security, anonymity and providing auditioning capabilities. The voting system presented above provided the proponents the idea of facilities that a voting system can have.

LSA Elections Computerized Voting System India

(Tantia, Agrawal 2008) The council elections were carried out in a much smoother and modern way. They saved on time, effort, paper and whole lot of sweat. This was the first time in India that such a thing was done, and while being modern and userfriendly, it was also eco-friendly as it saved a lot of paper that would have been used up as ballot paper.

Chapter 3
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Methodology A methodology will consist of phases, themselves consisting of subphases, which will guide the systems developers in their choice of techniques that might be appropriate at each stage of the project and also help them plan, manage, control and evaluate research. It is usually based on some philosophical view. Methodology can regard as a generalized description of the activities of a series of design projects, together with a theory that explains why those projects were successful, and it may be seen as an abstraction from good practice. A methodology is usually presented not as a description but as a prescription, a recommendation that projects should follow the generalized task structure.
(http://www.blurtit.com/q121564.html)

Thus, methodology is the way on how to conduct research. It is used to a specific series of steps or a procedure which governs the activities of analysis and design, a procedure used in making systematic observations or otherwise obtaining data or information as part of a study.

Research Design Use case diagrams actually describe the usage of the system from the viewpoint of users (actors). Use cases can be also viewed as functionality that is accomplished through the interaction between system and actors. (http://www.eee.metu.edu.tr/~bilgen/SSarica.pdf)

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Figure 4 Use Case Model of Computerized Voting System Of Redeeming Grace Learning Center

It shows how the developer develops the system from analysis to development until installing the system. The admin is the person who takes care of conducting the elections by declaring the election details and declaring the results. The admin will login as administrator to access candidate details and student details.
Admin has the authority to administer transaction such as adding, editing, deleting and saving of information of the student and the running candidates . The
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students a member of the organization who participates in the election by casting his/her votes. Students can login only if they were already registered. The given
student number will be their username and their surname will be their password.

After the voters log in, the student may now proceed to voting. He/she can select the name of his/her chosen candidate. After the voting process the administrator will collect the total result of votes and print it. The admin may now logout after all the transaction is done. Both student and Administrator and also other member of faculty may view the result of the winning candidates. System Design

Figure 5 V-Model of Computerized Voting System of Redeeming Grace Learning Center There is a number of different models or paradigms of software development. The V model as shown in figure 5 was a variation from the
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sequential model. This model shows the relationship between the tests and design and how each process works. The V-model develops and regulates the software development process. It describes the activities and results that have to be produced during software development. The V model includes different phases requirement specification, software analysis, software design, coding, module testing, integration testing, implementation, operation, and maintenance. Each phases has an essential part in the development of the software starting from data gathering, designing the desired interface, coding of program up to testing and maintenance. After each stage was defined, the development precedes the new stage. Requirement Specification In this process, different information and data that help the proponents in creating the proposed system were collected. The researchers gathered all possible requirements of the study to be developed. The researcher obtained references from books, thesis and online articles to support the study. The information gathered was analyzed in order to create the target outcome of the system. Software Analysis In this stage, the information collected was combined to come-up with an idea that contributed in developing the research project. The researchers analyzed all the information gathered to obtain a better understanding of it. Software Design The researchers come- up with the idea of what the system should look like based on the information gathered. The researchers composed the CFD and DFD the flow of the system.
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(See figure 6 and 7) Coding In this process, after (GUI) was completed, the coding begins. The researchers used Visual Basic 6.0 as the programming language. Software Design Testing In this stage, the researchers planned the partial outcome of the system. The system was tested to meet the satisfaction of the user. If the result of the test is unsatisfactory, the researcher will go back to the system designing phase to alter the system in accordance to the users feedback. User's Feedback In this process, the researchers collected feedback from the users of the system. If the proposed system did not satisfy the users, the researchers will go back to the software analysis phase to revise the system in accordance to the criticism and feedback from the users. Operation and Maintenance The researchers checked the system operation if there were errors occurred while the system are was being tested. The respondents gave some instructions on how to use and maintain the system.

Data Gathering Procedure and Data Analysis The first step before going to the testing proper is to make a request letter. Upon approval, the researchers retrieve the request letter. In administering the questionnaire, the researchers were use the time allotted for vacant to avoid distractions of class discussions. The administrator response was given enough time to answer the question.

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After

data

gathering,

the

researchers

now

collected

the

given

questionnaire and use it as their source of information to formulate the problem that RGLC encountered in their voting process. The study utilized first hand data which comes from the chosen respondent who answered the questionnaires given to them. First hand data are those that come from the respondent who have been asked prior to the research. The study also utilized secondary data. Secondary data include raw data and published summaries, as well as qualitative data. (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2003) deduced that secondary data fall into three main subgroupsdocumentary data, survey-based data, and those compiled from different sources. With this particular study, the researcher utilized documentary secondary data (in the form of articles from books, journals, magazines, and newspapers) that are generally about voting process as well as relevant literatures and survey-based data in order to meet the objectives of this study. Research Instrument The researcher designs a self-administered questionnaire for the data gathering process to get qualitative data. The primary aim of the questioner is to determine the process used by Redeeming Grace Learning Center in their voting system and to list down the problems they encounter. This research used a mixture of closed questions and more open comments in the questionnaire. Through closed questions, the researcher will be able to limit responses that are within the scope of this study. System Requirements The proponents create the list of hardware and software requirements in using the computerized voting system so that other researcher would know the minimum requirements of this system. The following are the needed software for the proposed system: Software Requirements

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Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Microsoft Access

Hardware Requirements Pentium IV and above. At least 10MB available hard drive 128MB of RAM Keyboard Mouse Monitor

Appendix
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Fish Bone Diagram

(Figure 1)

(Figure 2)

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(Figure 3)

Figure 6 Context Flow Diagram

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Figure 7 Data Flow Diagram

1st Normal Form

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2nd Normal Form tbladmin

tblcandidate

tblstudent

Figure 8 Normalization

Figure 9 Entity Relationship Diagram

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Figure 10 Flowchart

Figure 11 Gantt chart

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