A Web e-voting system with a data analysis component
Journal of Systems and Information Technology
ISSN: 1328-7265
Article publication date: 12 March 2018
Abstract
Purpose
Currently, electronic election is one of the most popular issues of e-democracy. This has led to the development of applications and several security mechanisms to address such necessity. The problem that arises is that such applications are created either on demand for a specific election process, or experimentally for scientific purposes. The purpose of this study is to present a new e-voting system, called VOTAN. The VOTAN system involves a combination of new features with basic advantages, the implementation as open source software, its modular organization covering the functional requirements of a typical electronic voting system (EVS) and the capability of data analysis of candidates and voters.
Design/methodology/approach
VOTAN stands for VOTes Analyzer. It is a secure application for the conduct of electronic elections through the internet based on its own security protocol. It also includes a data analysis component which analyzes the election results and investigates the factors that play a crucial role. The major advantages of the system are that it is an open source and includes a data analysis module that can distinguish important variables from the elections and help make predictions for the outcome based on the selected variables. It is a practical solution to the existing e-voting applications and is ideal for small communities such as organizations, universities and chambers.
Findings
Its main advantage, compared to similar e-voting systems, is the integration of the data analysis component. The analysis of the data produced from elections is considered a critical process to fully comprehend the outcome of the elections and its correlation to specific attributes/variables of the election process. The data analysis module is a unique feature of VOTAN. It facilitates the selection of the most important attributes that influence the outcome of elections and creates a mathematical model to predict the outcome of an election based on the selected attributes. The method used in the module is the LDA.
Originality/value
The originality of the paper derives from the data analysis component and its security protocol/schema that fulfils several requirements.
Keywords
Citation
Valsamidis, S., Kontogiannis, S., Theodosiou, T.G. and Petasakis, I. (2018), "A Web e-voting system with a data analysis component", Journal of Systems and Information Technology, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 33-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-01-2017-0002
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited