Multimodal Biometric Voting System

K.S.K.GUPTA

U.SRIKANTH

-Information Technology
GITAM UNIVERSITY

-Information Technology
ANITS college of engineering

VISAKHAPATNAM

VISAKHAPATNAM

Email:gupta043@gmail.com

Email:sri_srikanth4all@yahoo.co.in

ABSTRACT

voters have no evidence that proves which candidates

received their votes. The existence of such evidence
would allow votes to be purchased by a candidate.

This paper encloses the information regarding the

present interesting topic, the biometrics; biometrics
technology allows determination and verification of
ones identity through physical characteristics. To put
it simply, it turns your body in to your password. We
discussed various biometric techniques like finger
scan, retina scan, facial scan hand scan etc. An
algorithm have been proposed by taking a multi
modal biometric voting system to authenticate a
person and consider his voting .
We conclude that this voting system is superior for
use in a general election when compared with
traditonal voting system and ven
Keywords
Biometrics, Hashing, Database, Covert Surveillance

1.OVERVIEW
Elections allow the people to choose their
representatives and express their preferences for how
they will be governed. Naturally, the integrity of the
election process is fundamental to the integrity of
democracy itself. The election system must be
sufficiently robust to withstand a variety of
fraudulent behaviors and must be sufficiently
transparent and comprehensible that voters and
candidates can accept the results of an election.
Unsurprisingly, history is littered with examples of
elections being manipulated in order to nuence their
out come. The design of a good voting system,
whether electronic or using traditional paper ballots
or mechanical devices, must satisfy a number of
sometimes competing criteria.
The anonymity of a voters ballot must be preserved,
both to guarantee the voters safety when voting
against a malevolent candidate, and to guarantee that

The voting system must also be tamper-resistant to

thwart a wide range of attacks, including ballot stuffing
by voters and incorrect tallying by insiders. Another
factor, as shown by the so-called butter y ballots in
the Florida 2000 presidential election, is the importance
of human factors. A voting system must be
comprehensible to and usable by the entire voting
population, regardless of age, infirmity, or disability.
Providing accessibility to such a diverse population is
an important engineering problem and one where, if
other security is done well, electronic voting could be a
great improvement over current paper systems. Flaws
in any of these aspects of a voting system, however,
can lead to indecisive or incorrect election results.
In electronic voting system there have been several
threats, and poor software development processes
including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect
use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network
1.1Draw back of traditional and electronic voting
system-need for Biometrics
Up to now the voting systems are taking the data
of voting and they are not bothered about the
authenticity of the person where by providing a chance
for others to cast the votes i.e unauthorized privilege
escalation .
The proposed voting system authenticates the
person and considers the voting
2. Classification of biometrics:
The two categories of biometric techniques are:
The physiological based techniques, which
measure the physiological characteristics of a person.
These include fingerprint verification, iris analysis,
facial analysis, hand geometry-vein patterns, ear
recognition, odor detection and DNA pattern analysis.

The behavioral based techniques, which

measure the behavior of a person. These include hand
written signature verification and speech analysis.
These techniques involve two major steps. These are
the Authentication & the verification.
Authentication is a process of one-to one
comparison, rather than a mass searching process.
Identification is a process of checking for a particular
identity in the database available.
The setting of the error tolerance of these systems
is critical to their performance. Both errors (False
Rejection and False Acceptance).
Should be low and they should both are quoted by the
manufacturers.
3.How biometric technology works Process involved
in using a
biometric system for security is:

Figure1.
During enrollment:
Capture the biometrics, which has to be stored in the
database;
Process the biometric, extract and enroll the
biometric template;
Store the template in a local repository, a central
repository, or a portable token such as a smart card.
During access to database:
4) Live-scan the biometric feature;
5) Process the biometric and extract the biometric
template;
6) Match the scanned biometric against stored
templates;
7) Incase of successful verification; provide a
matching score to business application;
8) Record a secure audit trail with respect to system
use
Biometric applications depend on comparing as new
Measure against previously captured information. In
Biometric application some aspect of a person is
measured; the measure is processed; and the resulting
data is stored; At a subsequent time, the same aspect
of a person is measured and compared against the
stored data .If it is being used for authentication, the
new data is compared against the data, already in
storage for that person. If it is being used for
identification, the entire database is searched, in order

to locate one or more individuals that are a close fit to

the new data. Most biometrics technologies do not
seek exact equality between the new and the stored
measures. Instead they have a pre-set tolerance range
within which the two are deemed to be sufficiently
close. In order to reduce transmission time, costs and
to require less storage space, compression algorithms
are used. To provide better transfer rate of data
during identification & authentication hashing is
used. Hashing is a process of detecting the perfect
match of a particular input record from a large
database using a hashing function.
4.Applications of biometrics
All the information regarding the fingerprints, retina
etc Are digitalized and stored. This can be
compared with a database in seconds and with an
extraordinary degree of accuracy. Fingerprints have
the advantage of being cheaper and simpler than most
other biometrics.
4.1E-commerce Applications:
E-commerce developers are exploring the use of
biometrics to more accurately verify a trading partys
identity.
4.2 Covert Surveillance:
Facial and body recognition biometric techniques come
in to picture automatically to identify known suspects
entering buildings or traversing crowed security areas
such as airports.
5.Types of Biometric security technologies:
5.1 Finger scan:
Finger-scan biometrics is base on the distinctive
characteristics of the human fingerprint. A fingerprint
image is read from a capture device, features are
extracted from the image, and a template is created.
Fingerprints are used in forensic applications: largescale, one-to-many searches on databases of up to
millions of fingerprints. These searches can be done
within only a few hours by using AFIS (Automated
Fingerprint Identification Systems). The basic in both
finger scan and finger prints is that the curvatures,
deltas, crossovers, pores, loops etc, are of a person are
captured and stored in the database in digitized for and
are encrypted in cases of authentication or
identification .

Figure2:

Finger Scanner

5.2 Hand geometry

Hand geometry involves analyzing and measuring the
shape of the hand. This biometric offers a good balance
of performance characteristics and is relatively easy to
use. It might be suitable where there are more users or
where users access the system infrequently and are
perhaps less disciplined in their approach to the system.
Accuracy can be very high if desired, and flexible
performance tuning and configuration can
accommodate a wide range of applications.
Organizations are using hand geometry readers in
various scenarios, including time and attendance
recording, where they have proved extremely popular.
Ease of integration into other systems and processes,
coupled with ease of use, makes hand geometry an
obvious first step for many biometric projects.

Fig.3 Hand Geometry

5.3 Face
Face recognition analyzes facial characteristics. It
requires a digital camera to develop a facial image of
the user for authentication. This technique has attracted
considerable interest, although many people don't
completely understand its capabilities. Some vendors
have made extravagant claims
Multimodal Biometric Voting System
which are very difficult, if not impossible, to
substantiate in practicefor facial recognition
devices. Because facial scanning needs an extra
peripheral not customarily included with basic PCs, it
is more of a niche market for network authentication.
However, the casino industry has capitalized on this
technology to create a facial database of scam artists
for quick detection by security personnel.
5.4 Signature
Signature verification analyzes the way a user signs
her name. Signing features such as speed, velocity,
and pressure are as important as the finished
signature's static shape. Signature verification enjoys
a synergy with existing processes that other
biometrics do not. People are used to signatures as a
means of transaction-related identity verification and

most would see nothing unusual in extending this to

encompass biometrics. Signature verification devices
are reasonably accurate in operation and obviously
lend themselves to applications where a signature is
an accepted identifier. Surprisingly, relatively few
significant signature applications have emerged
compared with other biometric methodologies. But if
your application fits, it is a technology worth
considering.
5.5 Voice
Voice authentication is not based on voice
recognition but on voice-to-print authentication,
where complex technology transforms voice into text.
Voice biometrics has the most potential for growth,
because it requires no new hardwaremost PCs
already contain a microphone. However, poor quality
and ambient noise can affect verification addition, the
enrollment
procedure
has
often been more
complicated than with other biometrics, leading to
the perception that voice verification is not user
friendly. Therefore, voice authentication software
needs improvement. One day, voice may become an
additive technology to finger-scan technology.
Because many people see finger scanning as a higher
authentication form, voice biometrics will most likely
be relegated to replacing or enhancing PINs,
passwords, or account names.
5.6 Retina scan:
Retina scan requires the user to situate his or her eye
with inch of the capture device and hold still while
the reader ascertains the patterns. The user looks at a
rotating green light as the patterns of the retina are
measured at over 400 points; which leads a very high
level off accuracy in comparison to most other
biometrics. Retina scan is designed to use in military
facilities, logical security applications such as
network access or PC logic. The patterns of blood
vessels on the back of the human eye are unique from
person to person. The blood vessels on the back of
the retina are generally stable through ones lifetime,
with the exception of degenerative diseases. Since the
retina is an internal portion of the eye, retina
scanning is considered intrusive. Thus the individual
may be hesitant to get exposed to the scanning.
Moreover, retina scanning is a costly and sophisticated
process
5.7 Iris scan:
The iris has colored streaks and lines that radiate
out from the pupil of the eye. The iris provides the
most comprehensive biometric data after DNA. And
the chance that any two people may have the same
pattern is one in 10 to-the-power-78, which is
way above the current population of the Earth. In this
scanning, the characteristics of the iris are taken into
account. About 266 unique points are recorded and

converted into a 512-byte iris code (somewhat similar

to barcode). For recording the iris pattern, a
monochrome camera is used and the distance between
the eye and the camera can be at most 3 feet. The iris
code constructed contains information the
characteristics and position of the unique points. The
iris has more unique information than any other single
organ in the body.
6.Drawbacks of traditional and electronic voting
systems
A major problem with biometrics is how and where to
store the users template. Its storage introduces privacy
concerns. On the other hand, storing the template on a
smart card enhances individual privacy and increases
protection from attack, because individual users control
their own templates.
Inside the eye is a very delicate area and so, many
people are very hesitating to use laser eye device. Two
primary causes of errors affect biometric data: time and
environmental conditions. Biometrics may change as
an individual ages. Environmental conditions may
either after the biometric directly (for example, if
a finger is cut and scarred) or interfere with the data
collection (for instance, background noise when using a
voice biometric).
7. Future of biometrics
Biometric technology is one area that no segment of
the IT industry can afford to ignore, biometrics
provides security benefits across the spectrum, from IT
vendors to end users, and from security system
developers to security system users. All these industry
sectors must evaluate the costs and benefits of
implementing such security measures.
8.Our work on biometrics
Every biometric system has its limitations. Therefore,
identification based on multiple biometrics is an
emerging trend as multimode biometrics can provide a
more balanced solution to the security multimode
systems involve the use of more than one biometric
system. Our contribution to the above subject is that we
have developed an algorithm on multi modal biometric
voting system. The authenticity is assured by using
finger scan, voice scan, hand geometry scan and by
requesting the password given by the citizen for a
particular user when necessary. The following are the
flowcharts and the algorithms.
8.2.1Algorithm:
Every citizen is given PIN number and his
characteristics are
stored in the corresponding location
STEP 1: A person enters the polling booth that uses
multimodal biometric voting system (finger scan, voice
scan & hand scan) for greater degree of security
STEP 2: The person is requested to ENTER his or her
PIN The PIN is checked whether it is in voted list or
not
IF ( PIN is in voted list GOTO STEP8

ELSE GOTO STEP : 3)

STEP 3: The person is requested to give his or her
fingerprint (as input) on the finger scan pad
The fingerprint taken as input in the above step is
compared with the fingerprints in the database of
corresponding pin .
d) IF
Fingerprint is matched with the fingerprint
available in the database of PIN (condition)
THEN,
GOTO STEP 8.
ELSE (i.e., if finger print does not find a match)
GOTO STEP 4
e) STEP 4: The person is requested to speak few
words, which is converted into digitalized code by
the voice scanner

start

Multi model biometric voting

system
Finger
scan
Yes

(b)
(d)

no

Voice
scan
(g)

(f)
(k)

yes

no

Hand
scan

Flow
chart-2

no

yes

Flow
chart-2

(i)

Access the matched

into
database
file

stop

f) STEP 5: The code in the above step is compared

with the voice codes in the database of PIN
IF the code is matched (condition)
THEN,
GOTO ALGORITHM 2
ELSE (i.e., if the code does not find a match)
GOTO STEP 6.
i) STEP6: The person is requested to place his
hand above the hand scanner so that the structure of

the hand is recorded.

j) STEP 7: The data in the above step is
compared with all the data available in the database.
IF the data is matched
THEN,
GOTO STEP8.
ELSE (i.e., the data does not find a match)
GOTO Algorithm 2.
k) STEP 8: The person is authorized for voting
l) STEP 9: The corresponding pin is noted as voted
8.2.2 Algorithm 2:
m) STEP 1: A request is sent to the database
querying it to send the password file from the OS
security files.
n) The passwords are received in an encrypted from
(DES-data Encryption Standards).
0) STEP 2: The person is requested to speak his
password.
p) STEP3: the vocal password spoken in the above
step is converted into textual password by the speech
processing circuit
q)STEP-4:This password is compared with
password file from step 1.
IF match is found
THEN,
ELSE,
Voting is denied
r) STEP5: Exit.

Flow chart
algorithm-2

Password
spoken

Data
Glow the
red light
base
indicator

Speech processing
circuit.
Operating system
searches for
security file
Textual password

(o)

Consider the vote.

stop
Figure 4.flowchart-2

9.Conclusion
Multimodal Biometric Voting System
Considering various biometric techniques like finger
scan, retina scan etc, finger scan is widely used.
Biometric technology has been around for decades
But has mainly been for highly secretive
environments with extreme security measures. The
proposed algorithm for multimodal biometric voting
system minimizes the corruption involved by human
intention . The technologies behind biometrics are
still emerging. This article gives a snapshot of the
dynamics under way in this emerging biometric
market, and we hope it will help all the possible
alternatives when
acquiring new biometric
technologies.
10.REFERENCES:
Biometrics, Personal identification in Networked
Society: Vol.479, Anil K. Jain (Editor). Ruud Bolle,
Sharath Pankanti.
A Practical Guide to
Biometric
security
Technology
Simon Liu and Mark Silverman
Biometrics and strong Authentication
Chris Mills, Karl Ware, Christopher Mills, April
2002,Osborne McGraw-Hill.
Biometrics: identity Verification in a Networked
Worked
Samir Nanavati, March 2002, John Wiley & Sons