Electronic voting systems: Requirements, design, and implementation

The term "Electronic Voting (e-voting)" refers to the use of computers or computerized equipment to cast votes in an election. e-voting aims at increasing participation, lowering the costs of running elections and improving the accuracy of the results. This paper details the requirements, design and implementation of a special type of electronic voting systems, the remote on-line voting system, suitable for university setting where students can cast their votes anytime, anywhere and using fixed and mobile electronic devices including personal computers, personal digital assistants and smart and regular phones. To avoid web content replication for each of the connecting devices, the implemented system separates the data content from its presentation form. The separation is achieved by using modem technologies such as the extensible markup language to represent the web data content and the extensible style language transformation style sheets to customize the presentation of such content on different connecting devices, thus, achieving true "author once, publish to any device" design and implementation. (C) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.