Ageneral Purpose Image-Based Electors Smart Card Using an Enhanced Least Significant Bit Steganographic Method for Information Hiding: A case studyofthe Kenyan Electoral Process.

To legally participate in any political elections in Kenya, one must of necessity be in possession of at least two documents i.e. the electors card and the national identity card. Both of these documents make use of the bea rers face photograph and some textual identification information. The unprecedented growth in digital imaging and processing technologies have meant that, with little or no knowledge of the technology involved one is conveniently able to tamper with photographs and identity information on such documents resulting in cases of fraud e.g double registration and voting which have consistently marred our electoral process. In this paper we propose the use of a general purpose smart card based identification doc ument during elections. The textual identification information of the card bearer and his or her biometric data are embedded in his or her face photograph using an enhanced, randomized least significant bitsteganographic method. An experimental designwassetup to determine the effectiveness of the method by comparing the original and the reconstructed imagesstatistical characteristics to ensure that no notable differences exist. The experimental results show improved security of the biometric data an d personal identification details.