Objective
To design an ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE which can be used in elections. The machine is controlled by an AT-MEGA micro-controller and can be used both for voting and counting votes.
1) Final Project
COMPONENTS USED:
1) Micro controller:
Micro controller senses the signal given from switches and decides the mode of operation in voting mode it increments the data for corresponding key i.e. respective candidate as well as it sends signal to display block to indicate one key is pressed. In counting mode micro controllers fetches data from memory location and send it to display devices.
2) LCD:
Liquid Crystal Display which is commonly known as LCD is an Alphanumeric Display it means that it can display Alphabets, Numbers as well as special symbols thus LCD is a user friendly Display device which can be used for displaying various messages unlike seven segment display which can display only numbers and some of the alphabets. The only disadvantage of LCD over seven segment is that seven segment is robust display and be visualized from a longer distance as compared to LCD. Here I have used 16 x 2 Alphanumeric Display which means on this display I can display two lines with maximum of 16 characters in one line.
3) LED:
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices and are increasingly used for other lighting.
4) Control switches:
There are three control switches:
I. Clear Votes. II. Controller switch. III. Total Votes
SYSTEM DESIGN:
1) Power on: When supply is turned on RED LED glows.
2) Mode selection:
i) Voting mode: toggle switch on VCC
ii) Counting mode: toggle switch on GND.
Voting Mode:
When toggle switch is in voting mode “Voting mode” is displayed followed by “Please vote”. After a vote being given, “Please wait for authority switch” is displayed and again enable for voting after Control switch being pressed by the voting Authority.
Counting Mode:
When toggle switch is in counting mode “Counting mode” in displayed on the screen, and total number of votes to respective candidate can be displayed on the screen by pressing the respective key assigned to them.
3) Clear mode:
Press clear switch when all entries are required to be erased. Clear switch should be pressed before voting procedure.
4) Buzzer indication:
Pressing of key in voting mode is indicated by a buzzer sound.
5) Controller switch:
This switch is provided for enabling the keypad in voting mode. This switch is under the control of voting authority.
BLOCK DIAGRAM OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE:
Code
The link to code,hex file and other is below
PCB layout
SIMULATION RESULTS
The simulations were done using proteus software
IMPLEMENTATION:
The electronic voting machine was first tested in the voting mode. The EVM first needed an authority Switch to enable voting. After pressing the authority switch, the Green LED glows and a vote is registered. On registering a vote the EVM again asks for an authority switch to enable the next vote and the process continues. Then it was switched to Counting Mode where the EVM display displays the total number of votes that each party gets.
RESULT AND CONCLUSION:
We have described the specification and architecture of an ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE .Various fault-tolerance and security issues are delegated to the platform itself, therefore relieving the application designer from accommodating these features in the application design itself. This approach allows for the easy development and deployment of applications.
For quite some time, voting equipment vendors have maintained that their systems are secure, and that the closed-source nature makes them even more secure. Our glimpse into the code of such a system reveals that there is little difference in the way code is developed for voting machines relative to other commercial endeavors. In fact, we believe that an open process would result in more careful development, as more scientists, software engineers, political activists, and others who value their democracy would be paying attention to the quality of the software that is used for their elections. (Of course, open source would not solve all of the problems with electronic elections. It is still important to verify somehow that the binary program images running in the machine correspond to the source code and that the compilers used on the source code are non-malicious. However, open source is a good start.) Such open design processes have proven successful in projects ranging from very focused efforts, such as specifying the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) , through very large and complex systems such as maintaining the Linux operating System. Australia is currently using an open source voting system10Alternatively, security models such as the voter-verified audit trail allow for electronic voting systems that produce a paper trail that can be seen and verified by a voter. In such a system, the correctness burden on the voting terminal’s code is significantly less as voters can see and verify a physical object that describes their vote. Even if, for whatever reason, the machines cannot name the winner of an election, then the paper ballots can be recounted, either mechanically or manually, to gain progressively more accurate election results. Voter-verifiable audit trails are required in some U.S. states, and major DRE vendors have made public statements that they would support such features if their customers required it. The EVM project an ambitious attempt to create an open-source voting system with a voter-verifiable audit trail —
A laudable goal, the model where individual vendors write proprietary code to run our elections appears to be unreliable, and if we do not change the process of designing our voting systems, we will have no confidence that our election results will reflect the will of the electorate. We owe it to ourselves and to our future to have robust, well-designed election systems to preserve the bedrock of our democracy.
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