Development of a Fingerprint Biometric Voting System Prototype for Student Union Elections at a Nigerian University

Student union elections at Nigerian universities are frequently marred by multiple voting, underage voting, and vote manipulation, eroding confidence in student governance processes. This project developed a fingerprint biometric electronic voting system prototype for use in student union elections at a Nigerian federal university in the North Central geopolitical zone. An R305 optical fingerprint sensor was interfaced with an Arduino Mega 2560 for enrolment and authentication. Enrolled fingerprints were stored in the sensor's on-chip memory template database. A touch-screen TFT LCD displayed ballot candidate options after successful fingerprint verification. Vote tallies were encrypted and stored in EEPROM, with results accessible only via an administrative PIN. The system prevented re-voting by flagging each verified fingerprint as having voted. A PC-connected results tabulation programme exported final tallies in CSV format for announcement. The prototype was enrolled with 120 test fingerprints and subjected to 300 voting simulation trials. Authentication accuracy was 97.2 percent (False Acceptance Rate 0.8 percent, False Rejection Rate 2.0 percent). Duplicate vote prevention was 100 percent effective. Voting transaction time averaged 14 seconds per voter. The system operated reliably for 8 hours on a 7 Ah sealed lead-acid battery, covering a full single-day election period. The study recommends integrating a networked results collation hub for multi-polling-unit elections and seeking Independent National Electoral Commission review of the prototype for potential broader application.

Keywords: biometric voting, fingerprint authentication, student elections, North Central Nigeria, electronic voting