UVote App v1.0.2 leaks: Appears not to be ready for use.

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Just like we had promised to share a full review of the UVote app that the National Unity Platform, TechRafiki shall take an extra initiative to take you through a short tutorial on how this application works as most people have managed to access and download the leaked version but they have gotten stuck at certain points that is mainly at the registration process and have not gotten a chance to try it out beyond this stage. This is simply because the app appears not to be ready for launch or for general use in the market.

Read: Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform Set To Launch UVote App

How to download the UVote App

The UVote app is only available for android phones as per the application we managed to obtain. You can download this leaked apk version file for this application through this LINK that will lead you to the Google Drive folder where the application is currently stored. The application is 55.71 MBs in terms of file size (quite large for android apps).

The application is neither available on the Play Store or App Store (maybe that is why there is no leaked version for iOS/iPhone users yet) which gives us a strong feeling that this is a leaked version and we hope the National Unity Platform will soon launch the final version of the app.

So lets take you throughout a short tutorial on how to navigate around the UVote App

Signing Up and Registration.

After downloading the application, install, and launch the application. You will be welcomed by the Login Page but instead, click on the ‘Register’ option from where you will be directed to the Sign-Up form.

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On the Sign Up page fill in your details that is First Name, Last Name, Mobile Phone. You will then required to agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. After filling in the form, Go ahead and click ‘Register’

You will receive an alert with a message within the app (in form of a drop-down) “Error Something Went Wrong”. At this step, we too are not sure whether these sign-up details are being stored in the app’s database or you are simply filling in the signing-up form for formality something we hope will be lined out in the official version.

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Logging In

As one would expect that after signing up on an app the next step would definitely be to log in and access the services it has to offer. At this point, you will be attempting to fill in the Mobile Phone, Token and choosing an option of whether you are an official party agent or a non-official one.

Whereas some videos circulation around the internet have called upon users to Fill in their First Names as the ‘Token’ as this appears to be the only field that never appeared in the sign-up form, this site has learned that one can simply fill in any letters or numbers as long as they are above 3 characters to bypass this stage.

The same applies to the ‘Mobile Phone Number’ field (any digits beyond 3 can simply bypass the field). One then has to go ahead and choose their role that is either being an “Official” or “Non-Official” agent. Does not matter which one you choose you will still bypass this too. You can choose to log in and be directed to the app’s landing page.

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This unco-ordination of login data simply implies that there is no connection between the app and the system database that is supposed to do the authentication process by comparing these login credentials being submitted at login to those one submitted while signing up. Another fact observed is your sign up details were actually never submitted to the system database as we noticed this application behaved in an exact manner (that error message we talked about earlier on) when we turned off the phone’s internet connection.

For developers, we could simply say the app’s front end that consists of the user interface is not yet connected to the back-end that is the database where all login user credentials and app data are meant to be stored and retrieved for purposes such as authentication. That is why you are simply bypassing the login process with any details you get to fill in at this particular stage.

The form validation bit where the app tells one “Too Short” if submitted characters in a field is less than 3 or restrict the Mobile Phone filed to digits only, is too being done at the front-end of the app and nothing connected to the back end.

Since we got a chance of accessing the landing page, we shall then go ahead to see main features of the UVote app.

Features

Submitting Candidate Results

The app’s main feature appears to be enabling users to send results to the app’s/system database by filling in a declaration form of results which they can submit. One is required to select their District, Constituency, SubCounty, Parish/Ward, and finally their Polling Station. The column on the right showing the related codes to these fields information is automatically filled in by the system (this was quite good/user friendly).

One can now go ahead to fill in the number of votes for each particular candidate in regards to that particular polling station. If one of the candidate’s vote field is left empty, the application enforces form validation once again at this stage by not allowing one to submit the declared results without filling in the empty fields.

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Read: UG elections 2021, easy ways to access voter information

To submit the results, the app presents two options that cater to both an existing internet connection and a nonexistent one. If one has an internet connection, the form is submitted and a success notification is shared. For those without internet, the app presents an option to send the results via SMS (with some charges to be incurred on the side of the sender) or to keep an offline copy of the results (which we too tested but never seemed to work).

The alternative of allowing users to submit these results via SMS was really an innovative idea as this would cater for scenerios where internet and social media tend to be restricted during election day and for remote areas where users may not have internet.

At this particular point, we maybe thought about the fact that developers intentionally left the login and sign-up to work without an internet connection with an aim of allowing any user to access this declaration form and simply take part in submitting the results at their polling station but all this remains our speculation.

Read: Rwanda Media Commission suspends Youtube Channels Registration

Reporting an Incident

Like we have predicted earlier on, the app’s second feature allows users to report incidents by filling in the Report Incident Form fields that is type of incident (which is only giving ‘Other’ as the only dropdown option), description of the incident and finally attachment of evidence where one can upload a document or media not exceeding 10MBs. When tested this, a received a success notification but we could not confirm if any information was submitted but confirmed that this featured requires an active internet connection.

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Official App

With a few days left to the polls, we are hopeful that the National Unity Platform will soon be releasing the official version of the UVote app that will clear out the issues we have managed to notice with this leaked version. We hope the app is released on the official Google Play Store and an iOS version too is presented for iPhone users via the App Stores

If this happens to be the final version of the app (which could be the case) the party has to come out and quickly sensitize its electorate on why certain features seem to have bugs and on how to easily navigate around these. It also has to come up with an official centralized point of download for the application for the users to access it otherwise various unofficial versions of the application will be all over the place come election day.

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