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Electronic governance is the application of information and communication technologies to manage the functions of government to cater to the needs and concerns of the government both local and central, businesses and other players in society. It is defined as the use of ICTs to enable the efficient, faster and transparent manner of exercising political, economic and administrative power or authority in the governance management process of a country (Al-Nasrawi & Zoughbi, 2015). E-governance has some important elements such as digital democracy, online citizen engagement and participation, online public discussion and online public service delivery (Holzer & Manoharan, 2009). E-democracy or digital democracy is the use of the internet to improve the democratic process through online civic engagement and participation (Holzer & Manoharan, 2009). One of the cardinal aspects of the electronic or digital democracy is the application of ICTs in the election management process which is known as electronic voting (e-voting). Electronic voting is defined as the use of internet technologies or computerized voting systems to cast votes and utilized in the election management processes (Bungale & Sridhar, 2003; Mursi, Assassa, Abdelhafez, & Samra, 2013). It is the digitization of the registration, balloting, verification and counting process in the election cycle (Adeshina & Ojo, 2017). The use of e-voting is considered the most efficient way for voter registration, tallying of ballots and accounting of votes and it is ideally much sought after than the manual or paper-based system of conducting elections. The paper-based voting system, voters are authenticated and then given a ballot paper to go to the polling–booth to vote in a transparent ballot box within the full glare of the election officials and then sign the record to confirm they have voted (Fouard, Duclos, & Lafourcade, 2007). After polls end, the ballot boxes are opened and votes are counted and declared. An important aspect of the paper-based system is its capability to ensure the anonymity and verifiability of the votes cast (Fouard et al., 2007). Despite these positive aspects of the paper-based system, it is still shredded with systematic fraud (Fouard et al., 2007) which gives a call for the introduction of the electronic voting system to achieve the greater elements of anonymity and votes verifiability which the manual system provides. Also, issues such as the long state of preparation, fake and faulty voting, errors during vote counting, long queues and the long and high cost of vote counting process make the manual system less desirable (Mursi et al., 2013).
A well-functioning e-voting system must support the same elements or criteria of the manual system like security and anonymity (Ayed, 2017). It is therefore imperative that an e-voting system should guarantee critical elements of paper bases system such as correctness, privacy, anonymity (prevent vote-selling), robustness, verifiability, democracy (registered voters only can vote), and fairness about the election process (Fouard et al., 2007). Other critical requirements that an e-voting system should have are authentication, uniqueness, reliability, accuracy, convenience, scalability, cost-effectiveness and transparency (Mursi et al., 2013). In addition, an e-voting system reduces cost and enhances the accuracy of the results of an election; voter data is securely captured and managed (Mursi et al., 2013). E-voting systems must meet two vital forms of verifiability such as individual verification and universal verifiability (Gibson, Krimmer, Teague, & Pomares, 2016). In terms of the individual verifiability, voters should have the chance to verify that the vote cast is as they intended and accurately recorded while the universal verifiability provides evidence for anyone to verify that the votes recorded are accurately counted and tallied (Gibson et al., 2016). According to Gibson et al., (2016) these forms of verification provide and guarantees a high notch or standard of uncompromising evidence that the election results are accurate. Computer counting, Direct Recording Electronic voting machine (DRE), online voting, Poll-site e-voting, kiosk, and remote e-voting are some of the various forms of the electronic voting systems (Ojo, Adeshina, & Ayo, 2006; Oo & Aung, 2014; Qadah & Taha, 2007).