Functional requirements of Online Voting System for College Elections with non-functional
Functional Requirements
- User Registration and Authentication:
- Allow students and election officials to create and manage accounts.
- Implement secure authentication methods, such as username/password or multi-factor authentication.
- Voter Eligibility Verification:
- Verify voter eligibility based on criteria such as student enrollment status, year, and department.
- Provide mechanisms for voters to confirm and update their eligibility information.
- Election Setup and Management:
- Enable election officials to set up and manage elections, including defining positions, candidates, and election dates.
- Provide tools for configuring voting rules, such as the number of candidates to be elected or ranked voting options.
- Ballot Creation and Management:
- Allow election officials to create and manage digital ballots, including listing candidates and positions.
- Support various voting methods, such as single-choice, multiple-choice, or ranked-choice voting.
- Voting Process:
- Provide a user-friendly interface for voters to view ballots, select candidates, and submit their votes.
- Ensure that voters can review their selections before finalizing their votes.
- Vote Casting and Submission :
- Securely capture and submit votes, ensuring that each voter can cast only one vote per position.
- Implement measures to prevent vote tampering or duplication.
- Vote Privacy and Confidentiality:
- Ensure that votes are cast and recorded confidentially, protecting voter anonymity.
- Implement encryption and secure data storage to protect vote data from unauthorized access.
- Real-Time Vote Counting and Reporting:
- Automatically count votes and generate real-time election results.
- Provide dashboards and reports for election officials to view and analyze results.
- Election Results Announcement:
- Publish election results to authorized users, such as election officials and candidates.
- Provide mechanisms for announcing results to the college community in a transparent manner.
- Audit and Verification:
- Support auditing and verification processes to ensure the accuracy and integrity of election results.
- Provide tools for tracking and reviewing voting activity and system logs.
- User Support and Help Resources:
- Offer help resources, including FAQs, user guides, and support contact options.
- Provide customer support through various channels, such as email, live chat, or phone.
- Accessibility and Compliance:
- Ensure the system is accessible to all eligible voters, including those with disabilities.
- Comply with relevant regulations and standards, such as data protection laws and election regulations.
Non-Functional Requirements
- Scalability:
- The system should handle increasing numbers of voters, elections, and data without performance issues.
- Support for scaling infrastructure to accommodate growth and peak usage periods, such as during election days.
- Performance:
- Ensure fast and responsive interactions, with quick ballot loading, vote submission, and result processing.
- Optimize performance to handle large volumes of concurrent users and votes efficiently.
- Reliability and Availability:
- Ensure high availability with minimal downtime, supported by redundancy, load balancing, and failover mechanisms.
- Implement regular backups and disaster recovery procedures to maintain service continuity.
- Usability:
- The user interface should be intuitive and user-friendly, accommodating users with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Provide a consistent and seamless experience across different devices and platforms.
- Interoperability:
- The system should integrate seamlessly with student databases, identity management systems, and other relevant systems.
- Support standard APIs and data formats for interoperability and data exchange.
- Maintainability:
- Ensure the system is easy to maintain, with clear documentation, modular design, and support for regular updates and bug fixes.
- Implement automated monitoring and logging to identify and address issues promptly.
- Compliance:
- Ensure the system complies with relevant regulations and standards, such as data protection laws (e.g., GDPR, CCPA) and electoral regulations.
- Provide features to support auditing, data retention, and regulatory reporting requirements.
- Data Integrity and Accuracy:
- Ensure that all data collected and processed by the system is accurate, consistent, and up-to-date.
- Implement validation checks and data integrity mechanisms to prevent errors and data corruption.
- Localization and Internationalization:
- Support multiple languages and regional settings to cater to a diverse student body.
- Allow easy adaptation of the system to meet local regulations and cultural practices.
- Accessibility:
- Ensure that the system is accessible to users with disabilities, following web accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG).
- Provide features such as screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and adjustable text sizes.
- Privacy and Data Ownership:
- Ensure that users retain ownership of their data and can easily control, access, and delete their information.
- Provide transparency regarding data usage, sharing, and storage practices, with clear consent mechanisms.