Biometric Based Secured Remote Electronic

Voting System

Samarth Agarwal 1, Abhishek Jamwal 2, Afreen Haider 3, Param Dev 4 and Rajeevan Chandel 5
Electronics & Communication Engineering Department
National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur (H.P.), India.
Emails IDs: 1) ec16mi448@nith.ac.in, 2) ec16mi423@nith.ac.in, 3) ec16mi434@nith.ac.in,
4) ec16mi413@nith.ac.in, 5) rchandel@nith.ac.in

Abstract— India is world’s largest democracy and the essence of any It is also proposed to introduce the concept of “Remote Voting”
democracy lies in the fact that people choose their own which will enable people to sit at their homes and vote, just by
representatives. But in present era, the fair election process is facing
a lot of problems like booth capturing, rigging, fake voting, using their UIDAI identity number and finger prints. The system
tampering with the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) etc. Being proposed in the present paper, shall serve with a set of innovative
responsible engineers, it’s our duty to do something to curb this advantages namely, i) Reduced rigging and fake/invalid votes, ii)
menace. In the commonly used EVMs, the voting process takes ease of carrying the machine, iii) faster and more accurate voting
place electronically and this eliminates the use of ballot paper to cast
votes in elections as it is very time consuming and errors might process and iv)remote voting capability. The paper is organized
crawl in intentionally or unintentionally. Today authenticity of the as follows. The present section introduces the topic dealt-with.
voter is a big concern and it also should be made sure that a same Literature review is presented in section II. Section III provides
voter is not able to vote two times. This issue can be dealt with by methodology for carrying out the present project. Hardware
introducing biometric based voting system, where the authenticity
of a voter is established based on fingerprints. Hence, the principle
specifications are also mentioned. Circuitry and its working
shall be one person, one authentic vote. In the present work, a principles are presented in section IV. Finally, conclusion is
prototype fingerprint based biometric voting machine has been drawn in section V.
developed. It is proposed that a feature that will link the Aadhaar
database of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI),
Govt. of India, New Delhi; can be embedded. This shall facilitate
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
all the voters to get registered on the portal automatically, which
can be classified on the basis of regions and constituencies based on
their unique identification i.e. their finger prints. This shall enable Kumar and Begum [1] have described a voting system which
the device developed in the present research work, at the national involves minimalistic electronics machine and majorly depends
level of application by using it in elections conducted around the on paper work. A ton of desk work is included to spare the data of
country. This shall lead to a significant contribution for the voter who needs to go to polling booth carrying voter ID card for
betterment of the Indian election system.
validation. When validation is done by election officer then voters
Index Terms- Aadhaar, arduino, biometrics, EVM, finger-print cast their votes utilizing electronic machine. A list of all the
scanning, rigging, UIDAI. candidates contesting the elections is present on the machine and
by pressing the respective button, the voter can cast his/her vote
I. INTRODUCTION to the candidate of choice. To beat this customary election
framework, there is a need to contemplate the digital innovations
and their security. Benjamin et al. [2] have clarified in their
The most severe and frequent problem faced during conducting research that in paper-based elections, voters cast their votes by
saving their voting forms in fixed boxes which are dispersed over
elections is rigging (one person casting multiple votes). Although,
to identify people who have already casted their vote, voters are all the constituent circuits in a given nation or state. When the
given an ink mark on their finger. But still there are a lot of ways election period ends, all the ballot boxes are opened and in the
by which that ink mark can be removed easily and this leads to supervision of the confirmed authorities, the votes are tallied
chances of fake voting. Through this project, we propose physically. There can be mistakes in counting of votes or at times
developing a novel Biometric based Voting framework in order to voters vote more than once in this procedure. In some cases vote
curb the above illustrated problem of rigging. Finger Print Sensor count is even manipulated to change the result of the election in
Module is a device that captures the scanned image of the favour of a particular candidate. Along these lines they proposed
fingerprint, transforms it further into a digital code and stores it an electronic voting framework that will consequently perform
into its memory. The Arduino microcontroller commands the confirmation, approval and checking with the assistance of
entire process and acts as an interface between the fingerprint UIDAI. The proposed electronic voting system can be executed
sensor, LCD, LEDs, push buttons and the buzzer. alongside the customary election system as well [3]. The proposed
approach will utilize the data given by the UIDAI. The system

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proposed and the strategy completed has basically the following (Back) key again. Using the move up and move down keys, the
stages: enrolment, confirmation and approval. user can enroll new fingerprints and also select the storage
Chaum [4] and Shalini et al. [5] have proposed a fingerprint location or ID where these impressions are to be stored inside the
verification system utilising “minutiae extraction technique”. All framework. To move ahead and proceed, we need to press the
the fingerprint recognition systems are pretty much dependent on okay key and to delete any impression that has been stored
minute matching and database hashing, which have been all previously which is of no use anymore, we can press the delete
around contemplated. Ackerman et al. [6] have stated the key.
consequences and future possibilities if the smart e-voting system All these keys and their corresponding push buttons have clearly
is implemented practically. There are two basic level principle been marked for GUI support. The purpose of the Match key is to
objectives that have ascended from the voting procedure- (i) an establish the legitimacy of the voter. If the fingerprint matches
individual's fingerprint won't change the structure normally after with the print stored in the database then the user is authorized to
around one year after birth (ii) the fingerprints of people are cast his vote. The module takes a scanned image of the fingerprint
different. Even the twins don’t have the same fingerprints [7]. The and converts it into a digital template containing hills (represented
possibility of matching huge number of fingerprints with large by binary 1) and valleys (represented by binary 0). Each user gets
amount of electoral voters’ data raises a question of speed. But the three attempts to verify the biometrics and after that the buzzer
technique of Advanced Hashing eliminates the speed concerns starts to beep and the entire process comes to a standstill. If the
and adds remarkable speed to the entire process [8]. authenticity is established, the voting process starts. The voter gets
Another research [9] has addressed the idea of “digital a list of candidates contesting the elections and he votes for the
pseudonyms” and “untraceable electronic mail”, which can apply contestant of his/her choice by pressing the button in front of the
for e- voting and its security and anonymity. The concept of Block candidate’s name and the vote count gets added into the
chain was used in an attempt to establish a fair election process, framework. Finally, after the election period ends, the results
but the system turns out to be too complex to be actually (votes obtained by each candidate) are obtained by pressing the
implemented [10]. Gajabe [11] has introduced the concept of Outcome key.
remote elections in his research. Few researchers during recent era
propose that the Aadhaar database that the government of India
already has can be linked with the database of the Election
Commission of India and thus the entire electoral process can be
modified so as to involve biometric verification before a voter
casts his/her vote [12]. Due to the feasibility of the idea proposed
in these papers, a lot of research is being done lately for
developing more efficient finger print extraction techniques [13].
In Ref. [14-15] an “adaptive pore model” for “fingerprint pore
extraction” has been proposed where automated recognition is
done using the sweat pores. A computationally expensive
“skeletonization method or unitary scale isotropic pore model”
has been utilised.
All these research works show the vast possibility and large scale Fig. 1 Block Diagram of process flow.
merits of actually implementing the Biometric fingerprint based
electronic voting machines for conducting the unbiased election
procedure. Hence, the same has been attempted in the present As the voters come to the polling booth to cast their votes, they
work. A fingerprint based remote EVM using Arduino is proposed need to press the Match key. As soon as the match key is pressed,
to ensure fair and square election process. the buzzer beeps and the LED glows. After that the LCD asks the
user to keep the finger over the fingerprint sensor. Every user gets
III. METHODOLOGY three attempts to place his/her finger. Once the module captures
the image of the finger it finds its associated ids present in the
In the EVM system in the present work it is proposed to use a database using hashing. As soon as the id is matched the LCD
finger print sensor to confirm the authenticity of voters by taking shows “voter authorized”. And the second voting stage begins
their biometrics into the framework. Figure 1 gives the block indicated by the glowing of the Green LED. This enables the voter
diagram of the complete process. Here 5 push buttons- to vote for the candidate of their choice. This is done by pressing
Delete/Okay, Check Match, Register/Back, Move Up and Move a new set of keys in the matrix.
down have been used. Register and Delete key have double
features. The Register key has two features namely new Presently in the event that a similar voter comes and needs to cast
enrolment and going back functionality. In the original machines, a vote once more, at that point the framework will display
this task can be done using the Aadhaar ID. To register, the voter “Already Voted”. Thus, the same voter can't cast a ballot again in
needs to press the register key and then enter the ID. LCD guides any condition and buzzer will blare for 3 seconds. Likewise in the
the entire process cycle. Now if at this time user wants to abort event that by some coincidence or deliberately any non-enrolled
the process, then he/she can go back by pressing the Register
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voter comes to cast a vote, at that point fingerprint module won't  Fingerprint module
be able to detect the corresponding ID into the framework and the
LCD will display “No Fingerprint Found”. Flowchart given in The fingerprint module used in our model is R307. The
Figure 2 presents this whole process clearly. The specifications of fingerprint module, captures the fingerprint and saves it to the
the hardware required for accomplishing the prototype model of memory of the micro controller, it matches the fingerprint of the
the proposed system are as follows. user with the fingerprint database, it has a 32-bit CPU which
interfaces with the Arduino, the 4 external wires helps to send the
data to Arduino, and the other 2 wires are voltage and ground
wires. Figure 3 shows the fingerprint sensor module along with
Arduino Uno R3.

Fig. 3 Fingerprint sensor module along with Arduino Uno R3.

 Matrix Keypad 4x4

Each key of the matrix keypad is configurable to suite our needs

we have configured each button accordingly. The key
configurations we have made and the way we have used the
keypad in our prototype for casting of votes is that we have
assigned four different keys to different parties competing in the
elections say A, B, C, D and the fifth button (#) is used to delete
the record or the current database in the memory and sixth key (*)
for sending the final results to the administrator. The four wires
Fig. 2 Flowchart of the proposed project.
on the matrix keypad are connected to the 4 analog pins of the
Arduino microcontroller, this enables it to communicate with the
Arduino.
A. Hardware Specifications
IV. CIRCUITRY AND ITS WORKING PRINCIPLE
 Controller unit
The circuit proposed for the fingerprint based voting machine
The controller unit of the whole design is Arduino UNO R3 contains Arduino for controlling the whole process. The push
which is a microcontroller. The board is based on ATMEGA32. buttons for new registrations, deletions, selection of voter IDs and
The board has a combination of the PWM type and digital voting process, an alarm buzzer, set of LEDs and a 16x2 LCD for
signals. In our model we would access the fingerprint scanner instructing Voter and revealing the election outcome are all
module using the pulse width modulation pin and one digital controlled by the arduino microcontroller. Figure 4 shows the
pin. The matrix keypad is connected to analog pins. The code schematic diagram of the proposed circuitry. The Transmitter (T1)
to run the set can be downloaded from the computer to Arduino and Receiver (R1) section of the fingerprint module are directly
board using USB connector. connected at the serial pin T1 and R1 of the Arduino
microcontroller respectively. 5V supply is utilized for driving the
module, taken from the Arduino board.

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 Fig. 4 Schematic Circuit Diagram of process flow. Fig. 5 GUI interface of the circuit made for enrolling and scanning of
the fingerprints followed by the actual voting process.

The pins A0 (Register), A1 (Delete), A2 (Move Up), A3 (move

down), A4 (Check Match), D5 (Candidate1), D6 (Candidate 2), V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
D3 (Candidate 3), D2 (Outcome) of Arduino, are directly
connected to the push buttons with respect to the ground. Green Here, we are illustrating different Case Studies that we have
coloured LED is connected at the pin D6 of Arduino with respect undertaken to make sure that the developed Biometric based
to ground through a 1k resistor and the Yellow LED is connected Electronic Voting Machine actually deals with the problem of
to D7 of Arduino with the same method. A buzzer is also rigging and functions in such a way that it can be used to carry out
associated at pin A5. The digital pins D8, D9, D10, D11, D12, and the actual election process.
D13 of Arduino are respectively connected to D7, D6, D5, D4,
EN and RS pins of a 16x2 LCD which is configured in 4-bit mode. CASE 1:
The function of the yellow LED is to show that the fingerprint Four voters namely Rahul, Anubhav, Mansi and Sandeep want to
sensor is prepared to take a finger scan and the green LED shows cast a vote each. There is an election going on between two parties
that the device is prepared to take a vote or get results. This circuit namely ABC and XYZ. Rahul and Mansi came and scanned their
helps us realise the Biometric or the finger print based electronic fingerprints one by one and thus voted for XYZ. Similarly,
voting Machine. Figure 5 shows the prototype model of the GUI Anubhav and Sandeep voted for ABC. The result came out
interface of the circuit made for enrolling and scanning of the immediately and the LCD screen displayed “A TIE”.
fingerprints followed by the actual voting process.
CASE 2:
The Arduino is programmed in such a way that whenever a voter The training and placement representative was to be elected for
comes to cast his vote, firstly it is made sure that his fingerprint the class so we used this device for that purpose. The class had 87
does not match with the already stored fingerprints of the people students and 6 students contested for the position. All the students
who have already casted their votes, then only the voter will be were lined up outside and one student entered at a time to cast
allowed to vote. Whenever a voter gives his vote, alongside the his/her vote. Each student came one by one, got his/her fingerprint
vote, his unique finger impression will likewise be put away on scanned and voted for the candidate of his or her choice. As soon
the remote server. If willingly or by chance the same individual as the 87th student voted, the LCD screen immediately displayed
comes to cast a vote once more, the number pad won't be “Arihant has won the election”. There is an additional facility that
accessible to cast the vote as the unique finger impression has can only be exercised by the administrator which allows him to
been coordinated with recently put away Fingerprints. In this way see how many votes each candidate got so that there is no scope
a very high level of security will be established by abstaining of confusion or revolts.
from rigging and any other kind of fake votes. Moreover, before
casting the vote, the machine will check if the person voting is CASE 3:
registered with the Election Commission database or not; by An election was scheduled for the post of the Hostel Secretary
making sure that his finger print matches with the one that is where all the 13 members of the hostel committee were supposed
already existing with the Aadhaar database thus avoiding fake to cast their votes in favour of either Raman or Arun. As the voting
votes. Thus, the entire electoral process can be modified so as to process started, all the committee members started coming one by
involve biometric verification before a voter casts his vote. one and casting their votes. Arun was a descent boy and deserved
Thereby, ensuring fair and unbiased Elections. the post of Secretary. Raman being a very nasty kid, asked his

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