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Abstract— In this paper are shown two experiences about an There are three main motivations for choosing Google
electronic voting process. The first one is the use of tools for social Android for the experimental system: The first is because it´s
networking, to take advantage for its viral property for taking a rise on its worldwide resellers: In [22] is shown that
communication about an international voting process, called Web Android platform already takes 28% of its customers in U.S. on
X strategy. The second experience is a prototype for an electronic the first quarter of 2010. In [23], is reported that according to
voting system, which make available a dynamic web page to allow IDC´s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android
and to account voting activities from Google Android mobile platform will take a rise over 50% of market sales until 2014,
devices. on the global smart phone market. The second reason is because
many companies are joining alliances for the development of
Keywords- e-Voting Process, Google Android 1.0, Web
Applications, ID2E, International Direct Digital Election
open source technological solutions for this platform, like in
[24]. The third reason is the ease to programming applications
for this platform, considering complexity of use and availability
I. INTRODUCTION of its production tools. Since Android programming is based on
With the appearance of cell phones with free programmable Sun´s Java Language, the tools for development of Android
platform, it is possible the development of application for applications are free for download and use ([25] and [26]) with
worldwide popular participation, by the digital vote using many samples, discussion lists and tutorials over the web.
mobiles. According to [1], the ITU - International
This paper is divided into eight sections: This first section
Telecommunication Union estimates that in the world there
describes the intention to create an electronic voting process
already exist approximately 4.9 billion cell phones in 2009,
using mobile telephony, given the emergent opportunity of
reaching 5 billion in 2010. In [2] it is revealed that there is a
programmable platform of Google Android smart phones.
raising interest for voting on SMS cell phones, and through
Section II describes previous jobs about e-Voting systems.
social networking tools like Facebook or Twitter. It´s believed
Section III describes the first part of the experience: The
that the voting process by cell and smart phones give some
International Direct Digital Elections (ID2E), with help of Web
decision power to the citizens, which can actuate directly on
2.0 tools to communicate the main theme for elections between
decisions of their concerns. The voting process also can give
voters and interested people. Section IV describes the second
ways for numerical information surveillance about social
part of the experience: The construction of a prototype system
phenomena. For this reason, the following research is being
for e-Voting and tallying. Section V presents the results from
developed with the intention to survey future scenarios which
the two experiences. Section VI presents the conclusions.
can occur during any international voting process by mobile
Section VII presents the intentions for future work. At the end it
devices. The experiment has two steps: The first step refers to
is presented the consulted web references.
the voting process with the SMS protocol, using Web 2.0 tools
to help on information exchange during the voting process, and
the second step is the construction of a prototype system which II. PREVIOUS WORK
allows users of Google Android platform smart phones send The first experience about electronic voting – which serves
their votes directly to dynamic web pages, for its computation. as a foundation for this research – is the construction of the
electronic ballot-box in Brazil, in 1996. According to [3], in III. E-VOTING METHODOLOGY
1985 an automated electoral register was installed by the The developed application described inside this paper was
Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (of Brazil). The electronic ballot based on an e-Voting methodology – developed by HOESCHL
was developed in 1995, and used by the first time on the [11, 12, 13] – done through the use of cell phones (Electronic
municipal elections of 1996, inside the country. In 1989, on city Direct Digital Elections – IDDE or ID2E), and supported by an
of Brusque, Santa Catarina, Brazil, it was realized the first organizational methodology (called Web X Strategy, [19]). This
voting experience with micro-computers. The electronic ballot- methodology try to evaluate the impact of Web 2.0 social
box, initially called electronic vote collector (EVC), had the networks on discussions about the voting main theme, as
objective of identifying the alternatives for automation of the explained in [19], evaluate the Web 2.0 social network behavior
voting process, and for defining the necessary measures to its on a decision making digital process [12], and evaluate the use
implantation, from the elections to be held in 1996, in more of mobile devices as tools for public decision making. The
than fifty Brazilian cities. In [4] is described the FREE e- project was executed by the Information Society Studies Group
DEMOCRACY Project, developed with open code, on Java – ISSG, in 2009, linked to the Universidade Federal de Santa
language, for the implementation of e-Voting systems. In [5] is Catarina – UFSC, and the e-Gov, Intelligence and Systems
presented a project of an e-Voting system to be accessed via Institute – i3G [20], both installed inside the city of
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Short Message Service Florianópolis – Santa Catarina – Brazil.
(SMS) and Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP). In [6] is
described an e-Voting platform, specified with a Universal The first ID2E was realized between 6 and 20 of November,
Modeling Language variant: The Mobile-UML (M-UML), in the year of 2009 [14]. The voting process had as basic
from the same authors. This platform considers the question: Is the United Nations accomplishing its mission?
recommendations of Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents Allowing only positive or negative answers, sent through SMS
- FIPA [7], to allow interoperability between agents which protocol. Together with the answer, if the voter wanted, he/she
work on different platforms. In this platform, the voters deposit could send a picture of him/herself to post on Web 2.0 tools like
their votes on their own personal computers, while a mobile Picasa, Panoramio or Flickr, or even videos, as is the case for
device pass close those machines and collect their stored votes, You Tube.
under the coordination of a management software working in a
stationary server. In [8] is presented a taxonomy of e-Voting
systems, and like in [5], the authors present requirements for the
project and implementation of e-Voting systems. In [9] it is
described a local e-Voting system which eliminates physical
ballot-boxes, reducing costs and efforts, and consequently being
less time consuming. In [10] it is described an experimentation
about e-Voting by cell phones, by SMS protocol, for a focused
group of people, where it is shown the concerning about the fall
of Brazil inside e-Gov and Information Technology (IT)
international classifications, in 2008. The process was done
with five objectives: 1) diagnose the reasons for the fall; 2)
identify possible actions looking for better performance on the
next classifications; 3) detail on the discussion about Figure 1. Interface inside the server cell phone, responsible for the tally of
technological themes inside organizational environments; 4) positive (1-187), negative (2-188), or incorrect (3-1) votes. Copied from [15].
test the SMS devices with different regional telephonic codes in
many geographic regions; 5) evaluate performance and efficacy In [12] has also a voting surveillance by geographic region.
of different telephonic operators over this task. The tally of votes was done inside an application working on
Dot Net platform (Figure 1), inside a server cell phone. The
About the use of Web 2.0 tools to help on supporting the experimentation is a pilot for future e-Voting system projects.
voting process, HURME [17] – talk about the three main In [21] it was proposed some initial researches to create e-
properties of Web 2.0 to help on diffusion of information on Voting mobile applications for Google Android platform.
Barack Obama campaign: viral marketing, user-generated
content, and online-social network. In [18] is presented an About the solution on sharing information inside Web 2.0
initiative to create a list of Web 2.0 applications on e- environments, about the voted theme, there was selected the
Government. In [22] it is shown results on the gathering process following pages: 1) Delicious (delicious.com/) to publish links
of 18-35 aged voters, using a national campaign on the Web 2.0 related to the experiment; 2) iPetitions (www.ipetitions.com/),
social networks, in Australia, in 2007. to advice people about the voting process; 3) Twitter
(twitter.com/), and Blogger (siweb20.blogspot.com/start) for
The research written inside this document was developed the public to post comments about the main question; 4) GMail
based on the experimental research on [10], with some (https://www.google.com/), and Metajur Discussion List
arguments based on [17, 18], and will be shown on the next (br.groups.yahoo.com/group/metajur/) to privately post
sections. comments about the same subject; 5) Wikipedia
(pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Página_principal), Slideshare
(www.slideshare.net/) and Scribd (www.scribd.com/siweb20/),
to publish reports or presentations resulting from the
discussions about the theme; 6) Skoob (www.skoob.com.br/) to keeping the following elements: The vote ID for each record;
share books which maybe can give some historical base to the The defined language for the mobile device when the vote was
voting process, and help on argumentation about the question done; the smart phone number; The geographic position of the
about United Nations; 7) Picasa (picasa.google.com.br/), Flickr smart phone GPS (latitude and longitude) when the vote was
(www.flickr.com/), and Panoramio (www.panoramio.com/) to done; The vote answer (for this experimental case: Yes or No);
post pictures (with geographic position for these two last and the date and time when the user made his vote; 2) e-Vote
pages) referred to votes assumed by the voters; 8) YouTube collector web server These services are dynamic pages which
(www.youtube.com/) to post videos related to the voters, receives parameters via Web Browser. Such parameters feed
assuming its votes; 9) Orkut (https://www.google.com/), and the voting data base (the eVDB, on Fig. 2). Initially, due to the
FaceBook (www.facebook.com/) for the possible formation of availability of the two technologies, such services are being
social networks about the specified theme; and 10) Second Life implemented together on PHP (PHP eV Collector) and Java
(secondlife.com/) to simulate the voting process inside virtual Servlet (J2EE Servlet eV Collector) languages. The services are
environments. not complementary: They do exactly the same thing: collect e-
Voting data, sent to the dynamic web pages through given
The selection of such pages was done – first – with the parameters, and write it into a database;
intention to verify, by natural selection, what pages became the
preferred ones for the communication about the voting process,
among users. The second reason for the selection of these pages
was the intention to generate content for ideas about its usage
inside the system, or its usage inside the voting process. The
group was divided in two teams: One of them would raise
arguments confirming the accomplishment of the role given to
UN, and the second team would raise arguments denying the
accomplishment of its role. The participation of people was
direct, needing only the text messages sent by cell phones,
corresponding to people´s vote. The tallying was made in real
time. The result was communicated immediately after the final
time, on 2009, November 20, at 17:00h GMT.