Development of an Inclusive Participatory Democracy System (original) (raw)
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Mitigating Electoral Discontents in Nigeria: A Case for SMS Enabled Vote-Casting System
Mitigating Electoral Discontents in Nigeria: A Case for SMS Enabled Vote- Casting System, 2022
Two decades into the 4 th Republic has witnessed 6 elections fraught with varying kinds of anomalies that all 3 electoral reforms within the period have been unable to subdue. Electoral violence has summarily led to countless loss of lives and continued low voter turnout. Borrowing however from the resounding success of e-banking the country can rewardingly procure an e-resuscitation of the electoral sector that is not only guilty of consistent fraud but also liable for continued loss of lives. Nigeria ranked atop as the most improved country in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Mobile Connectivity Index as at 2019 and the seventh most improved globally. This progress was driven by a range of improvements like enabling regulatory framework espoused by the country in this direction and as a result the country now has one of the most affordable handset costs in the world besides a mobile penetration of 187 million active cell phone users of the country's 212 million population as of 2021. In addition, up from 31% in 2014 to 52% in 2019, Nigeria's Online Service Index score for e-government shows glaringly that the country is robustly ready for an SMS enabled vote casting system and would do well to rapidly implement same. SMS voting is premised on familiar technology and the use of a single ballot box (single computer Server) is not only fraud-proof but also guarantees eradication of violence and frequent loss of lives associated conventional votecasting system while also improving political participation and voter turnout.
Adoption, E-Participation, and Legal Frameworks, 2012
In the 21 st century, the ability of citizens to participate in online democracy is a key issue for governments in the developing nations because of its attendant benefits. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) facilities support the establishment of electronic interaction between citizens and the various organs of government. Towards this, a variety of efforts have been made, and many systems have been developed, but few attempts have been made to combine more than one mode of access for e-Democracy system. It is difficult for people with visual impairment to be involved in issues of governance and communicate with government representatives such as public office holders. For these people, having access to an electronic means of communicating with these representatives is necessary as a way of enhancing participatory democracy among the citizens. In this chapter, the authors propose an access method for e-Democracy system using Multimodal SMS, Voice and Web (Multi-SVW) system. The system was implemented using VoiceXML and PHP for the user interfaces and MySQL as the database. The system was evaluated using cognitive walkthrough strategy. The results of the usability evaluation suggest that the prototype Multi-SVW application presented in this chapter has "good usability" based on the total mean rating. The system provides accessibility options to citizens who are able-bodied and citizens who are blind or vision impaired as a way of promoting digital citizenship.
Model for A Mobile Phone Voting System for South Africa
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. Electronic voting has been attracting a lot of attention and research for the past few years all over the world, for it has some remarkable advantages over traditional paper-based voting. This research proposes the use of mobile phones to 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. In this paper, we designed and developed a mobile phone voting system, which allows users to spontaneously vote timeously using cellular network service providers. We developed the system using Microsoft C# for front end and MySQL Server 2008 for back end. We conducted usability testing at Central University of Technology (CUT) using stratified sampling and simple random sampling to get 40 participants. We collected data from the users by way of a self-completion questionnaire, which showed 93% of participants saying it is easy to use, 100% of participants saying it is easy to learn. The system was efficient, reliable, and accessible and secure as attested by participants.
An Appraisal of the Role of ICT as a Tool for Participatory Democracy in Nigeria
Journal Article, 2017
This paper appraises the role of ICTs as a tool for participatory democracy in Nigeria with particular reference to 2011 and 2015 elections. Qualitative literature reviewing method was adopted and two media theories-Diffusion of innovation and Technological Acceptance Model (TAM) were used as theoretical foundation. The study showed that all the five key stakeholders identified in this study except one (the security agencies) made unprecedented use of ICTs in the Nigerian electoral process during 2011 and 2015. Notwithstanding, the acquisition and applications of ICTs in Nigeria are not without challenges especially that of low level telephone penetration and uneven access. Hence, many localities are still not covered by telecommunication network in Nigeria leading to the marginalisation of crucial number of electorates. All the same, ICTs played a huge role in the success of both elections. Remarkable is the fact that all electoral stakeholders, most especially electorates, were hugely involved. This was unlike previous elections in Nigeria. Drawing from the foregoing, the study recommended that the utility of ICTs platforms to democratic governance and precisely to the electoral process should be further leveraged upon by stakeholders, as the electoral process stands to gain more if ICTs platforms are effectively and appropriately used. Also, there is need to ensure that the issues and challenges which confronted the use of the ICTs before, during and after the elections do not reoccur in future elections, most especially in the use of card readers.
Opportunity and Overview of SMS-based eGovernment in Developing Countries
Despite the large number of e-government initiatives in developing countries, most of the initiatives have failed. Possible causes of the failures include: low Internet penetration, high Internet costs and Internet illiteracy. Rather than forcing citizens to upgrade their current devices and knowledge by promoting e-government through PCs and Internet access, this paper proposes a bottom-up development approach by utilising the currently popular communications technology in developing countries, mobile phones and the Short Message Service (SMS) application. The advantages of initially using SMS to deliver e-government services in developing countries include: a large number of users with appropriate skills, low cost as users already have mobile phones, and an adequate infrastructure. For these reasons SMS-based e-government can be utilised by more people in developing countries than Internet-based e-government. This paper focuses on the potential of SMS-based e-government in low and lower middle-income countries (as defined by World Bank indicators). It includes an analysis of the present application of SMS-based e-government in some of these countries.
SMS-BASED VOTING SYSTEM FOR CRISIS PRONE AREAS IN NIGERIA
Journal of Computer Science and Its Application, 2019
The process of casting a vote in Nigeria is commonly associated with high risk factors such as violence. This singular exercise poses a lot of threat to life and security. In order to reduce these perceived risk factors, this paper proposes the use of SMS based voting system. The SMS based voting system allows voters to cast their vote from the comfort of their home or pre-selected secured area. The system is designed with a third party application programming interface to configure an automated voting result collation, load balancing and concurrency on a real time basis. In comparison with the current mode of voting currently used in Nigeria, the proposed method is cost effective, secured and highly reliable.
Framework for Multilingual Mobile E-voting Service Infrastructure for Democratic Governance
In most developing countries, electoral processes preceding democratic governance is characterized with high rate of fraudulent practices ranging from stolen of ballots, falsification of vote counts or rigging, improper voting and votes lost through invalid ballot marks due to ignorance and inadequate prior awareness and negligence. In this paper, we present the design and generic implementation of a framework of an integrated multilingual voting service infrastructure for conducting credible elections in rural and suburban communities in developing countries. The result of the testing done in Nigeria on the developed voting framework using Hypertext processor Web platform and Google Android mobile platform in the citizens' mother tongue shows promising results. These will ensure high level of citizen participation and conduct of free, fair, transparent, convenient and confidential electoral processes in future elections in these countries.
Mobile Telephony and the Democratic Process in Nigeria: Wider Coverage, Limited Impact
2017
AbstractThe explosive growth and widespread presence of mobile telephony in Nigeria has attracted comments and research focusing on its social, economic, technological and cultural implications. However, scant attention, mostly newspaper comments, has been given to the contributions of mobile telephony to the democratic process in Nigeria. Given the centrality of communication to democracy and the nascence of Nigerian democracy, filling this gap is a worthwhile task. Using a questionnaire administered onliterate phone users, and interviews with non-literate users, selected through a combination of purposive and convenience sampling techniques, we addressed the question: in what ways and to what extent has mobile telephony promoted critical democratic activities in Nigeria? There is widespread presence of mobile phone among respondents but limited use and limited impact. Only 49.7% of literate users used their phones for anything beyond sending and receiving calls and text messages; ...
MOBILE VOTING IN THE EGYPTIAN CONTEXT
International Conference e-Society 2013, 2013
To build a strong democratic country every citizen should practice his/her right to vote. During the elections, Egypt suffers in each of its electoral constituency at the election polls from crowd, hired thugs, people trying to impose their views on voters, and lack of privacy. The advances in information and communication technologies, has made it possible to engage Egyptian citizens in the country’s democratic process. Mobile devices in particular are extensively used in the Egyptian context, where with a population of around 85 million, there already over 70 million mobile subscribers. This highlights the high potential of m-government applications, which offer a wide range of services, on top of which is the mobile voting (m-voting). However, technology adoption is not only a matter of making it technically available, but is always framed in a social context. This makes m-voting in Egypt a tempting area to study. Accordingly, the study at hand, seeks to collect data about the current voting situation by videotaping the election polls during the coming parliament and presidential elections. Then, a structured questionnaire will be designed, and distributed over a sufficient number of Egyptian citizens, in order to get a better picture of the citizens’ preferences, attitude, and acceptance regarding the m-voting adoption. Finally, based on the data collected and analyzed, an m-voting prototype will be designed taking into consideration the technology adoption criteria in the Egyptian context.
Mobile based e-Democracy: The IBB/PMA e-Voting System
11th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics (PCI 2007) at Patras, Greece, 2007
In the field of electronic democracy, significant part of the research activity focuses on the ability to conduct secure and trustworthy electronic election procedures. This paper presents the extension prototype of an electronic voting system, called IBB/PMA Electronic Voting System that enables cellular phones and mobile devices to act as voting casting devices. The system takes into consideration significant properties of modern e-voting schemes such as security, legitimacy and vote integrity. The aforementioned properties of ...