Electt: running auditable and verifiable elections in untrusted environments

We present a system for running auditable and verifiable elections in untrusted environments. Votes are anonymous since the order of candidates on a ballot sheet is random. Tellers see only the position of the candidate. Voters can check their vote. An election is auditable using blockchain log. Threshold-encryption, which is used to implement the quorum, prevents a deadlock from occurring if a minority of candidates or observers tries to sabotage the election. Candidates and observers can indicate that the election was free and fair by exposing their keys, which are used by the system to decrypt each vote. Ballot sheets are encrypted by onion-routing, which has a layer with the key of the election instance, so it's impossible for a quorum to decode the results before they have announced their decision by exposing their keys. A register of voters ensures that only verified voters can vote without compromising their identity. If there any doubts about the identity of a voter, their vote can be excluded from the election, if a quorum agrees. This system is designed to scale from one instance to a distributed system that runs over an unlimited number of instances, which can be achieved using cloud instances or smartphones belonging to voters or tellers.Comment: 21 pages plus glossary because English languages are quite different when we speak about the electio

An Overview of End-to-End Verifiable Voting Systems

Advances in E2E verifiable voting have the potential to fundamentally restore trust in elections and democratic processes in society. In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive introduction to the field. We trace the evolution of privacy and verifiability properties in the research literature and describe the operations of current state-of-the-art E2E voting systems. We also discuss outstanding challenges to the deployment of E2E voting systems, including technical, legal, and usability constraints. Our intention, in writing this chapter, has been to make the innovations in this domain accessible to a wider audience. We have therefore eschewed description of complex cryptographic mechanisms and instead attempt to communicate the fundamental intuition behind the design of E2E voting systems. We hope our work serves as a useful resource and assists in the future development of E2E voting.Comment: This is a self-archived version of a chapter due to appear in the book "Real-World Electronic Voting: Design, Analysis and Deployment", edited by Feng Hao and Peter Y. A. Ryan, part of the Series in Security, Privacy and Trust published by CRC Press, 201