Technical Audit of an Electronic Polling Station: A Case Study

P. 16-30This paper shows the lack of standard procedures to audit e-voting systems and also describes a practical process of auditing an e-voting experience based on a Direct-recording Electronic system (D.R.E). This system has been tested in a real situation, in the city council of Coahuila, Mexico, in November 2008. During the auditing, several things were kept in mind, in particular those critical in complex contexts, as democratic election processes are. The auditing process is divided into three main complementary stages: analysis of voting protocol, analysis of polling station hardware elements, and analysis of the software involved. Each stage contains several items which have to be analyzed at low level with the aim to detect and resolve possible security problemsS

Towards improving the efficacy of code-based verification in internet voting

End-to-end verifiable Internet voting enables a high level of election integrity. Cast-as-intended verification, in particular, allows voters to verify that their vote has been correctly cast, even in the presence of malicious voting devices. One cast-as-intended verification approach is code-based verification, used since 2015 in legally-binding Swiss elections. We evaluated the Swiss paper-based polling sheet and voting interface, focusing on how well it supported voters in verifying their votes. We uncovered several potential issues related to manipulation detection. We improved the paper-based polling sheet and voting interface accordingly. Then, we carried out a between-subjects lab study with 128 participants to compare the original and improved sheet and interface wrt. usability and its effectiveness in supporting manipulation detection. Our improvements significantly enhanced detection. Our study delivered insights into participants’ somewhat ineffectual reactions to detected anomalies, i.e. starting over again and trying to cast the same vote again, or calling the telephone number provided by the interface. This problem is likely to manifest in any verifiable voting system and thus needs to be addressed as future work

State of Alaska Election Security Project Phase 2 Report

A laska’s election system is among the most secure in the country, and it has a number of safeguards other states are now adopting. But the technology Alaska uses to record and count votes could be improved— and the state’s huge size, limited road system, and scattered communities also create special challenges for insuring the integrity of the vote. In this second phase of an ongoing study of Alaska’s election security, we recommend ways of strengthening the system—not only the technology but also the election procedures. The lieutenant governor and the Division of Elections asked the University of Alaska Anchorage to do this evaluation, which began in September 2007.Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell. State of Alaska Division of Elections.List of Appendices / Glossary / Study Team / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Summary of Recommendations / Part 1 Defense in Depth / Part 2 Fortification of Systems / Part 3 Confidence in Outcomes / Conclusions / Proposed Statement of Work for Phase 3: Implementation / Reference

What did I really vote for? On the usability of verifiable e-voting schemes

E-voting has been embraced by a number of countries, delivering benefits in terms of efficiency and accessibility. End-to-end verifiable e-voting schemes facilitate verification of the integrity of individual votes during the election process. In particular, methods for cast-as-intended verification enable voters to confirm that their cast votes have not been manipulated by the voting client. A well-known technique for effecting cast-as-intended verification is the Benaloh Challenge. The usability of this challenge is crucial because voters have to be actively engaged in the verification process. In this paper, we report on a usability evaluation of three different approaches of the Benaloh Challenge in the remote e-voting context. We performed a comparative user study with 95 participants. We conclude with a recommendation for which approaches should be provided to afford verification in real-world elections and suggest usability improvements

Designing and generating prototype for E-Governance based election strategy using biometric authentication and smart card device

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E-voting: an immature technology in a critical context

E-voting has been introduced prematurely to national elections in many countries worldwide. There are technical and organizational barriers which must be resolved before the use of e-voting can be recommended in such a critical context. Two fundamental requirements for e-voting systems are in con ict: ballot-secrecy and accuracy. We describe the nature and implications of this conflict, and examine the two main categories of proposed solutions: cryptographic voting schemes, and Voter Veried Audit Trails (VVATs). The conflict may permanently rule out the use of remote e-voting for critical elections, especially when one considers that there is no known way to reproduce the enforced privacy of a voting booth outside the supervision of a polling station. We then examine the difficulty faced by governments when they procure Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems in general, and some mitigation strategies. We go on to describe some legal implications of the introduction of e-voting, which could have serious consequences if not adequately explored, and discuss the evaluation and maintenance of systems. In the final chapters we explore two approaches to the development of requirements for e-voting

Improving Access to Voting: A Report on the Technology for Accessible Voting Systems

Twenty percent of U.S. adults with disabilities--more than 8 million eligible voters--say they have been unable to vote in presidential or congressional elections due to barriers at or getting to the polls. Improving Access to Voting is a new report by technology expert Noel Runyan, published by Demos and Voter Action, that finds that state voting systems are widely noncompliant with federal ADA and HAVA access requirements for voters with disabilities

An Analysis of Voter Fraud and Proposed Methodology for Recording Numerical Anomalies in Polling Data

Debate surrounding the security and accessibility of voting procedures in the United States has caused the matter of electoral integrity to become a point of contention. Confusion surrounding the Federal government\u27s response to allegations of fraud has decreased the population’s trust in the government and increased voter apathy. The context for an empirical methodology is established with a history of e-voting, voter security, and voter-fraud sensationalism. This research methodology is then described and implemented with a software application that analyzes the proximity of voters to polling locations to study the way people vote and how fraud may be committed at polling stations. The development cycle, design, and use cases of this software are described, and a variety of improvements are suggested as motivation for future application

A proposal for the use of blockchain in the portuguese voting system

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceThe key objective of this proposal is to present one of the problems that the Portuguese economy, as well as other European countries, have been facing in regard to the civil society intervention in the democracy: the decrease of turnover rates in the voting system. The main objective is to propose the use of Blockchain technology in the Portuguese Voting System, as a mechanism to counter this trend. In order to understand how the possible application of a remote e-voting system succeeds, Estonia was selected as the case of study. Its architecture, as well as the legal, social and technological issues and challenges associated are investigated in the light of the information collected in the literature review. Considering the case analysis and discussion, a set of recommendations that purpose the use of a remote electronic voting system in the Portuguese electoral system are presented and a critical analysis about the introduction of a Blockchain algorithm is made. This dissertation concludes about the advantages and disadvantages from the use of this decentralized system when compared with a system involving a third-party as the one used in the Estonian I-Voting. The validation is based on interviews and discussions with professors in the area of information systems and law, and also with a contribution of a Digital adviser of the Estonian e-Governance model