Voting System Design


Overview

The system must be able to support the organization and carrying out of elections at national, state, and local levels. It must allows voters to register and vote online; it must maintain the normal prohibitions against one person voting more than once in any single election; it must maintain the normal prohibition against non-registered voters voting in any elections; it must also maintain the normal prohibition of any one voter being registered in more than one place.

The system must allow novel forms of election to occur... for example, we will want to have elections as we do now (meaning all voting in a single day) but we also will want to have elections that occur over longer periods of time... weeks, perhaps months. We will want to allow flexible voting policies... for example, we may want an election where once your vote is cast it is irrevocable; we may also want elections where a voter can log on and change his/her vote as many times as desired... as long as it is prior to the end of the elction.

We want the system to have an information structure to make it easy for the voters to get at least candidate statements, party platforms, information about voting process, and the law of the land.

The system must support the gathering of statistical information...

Main Entities

Activities of the system

Design Issues