Classifying Privacy and Verifiability Requirements for Electronic Voting

Abstract: Voter privacy and verifiability are fundamental security concepts for elec-tronic voting. Existing literature on electronic voting provides many definitions and interpretations of these concepts, both informal and formal. While the informal defini-tions are often vague and imprecise, the formal definitions tend to be very complex and restricted in their scope as they are usually tailored for specific scenarios. Moreover, some of the existing interpretations are contradictory. This paper provides informal, yet precise definitions of anonymity, receipt-freeness and coercion-resistance and identifies different levels of individual and universal veri-fiability. The overarching goal of this paper is to investigate which levels are conceiv-able for implementing these requirements in e-voting systems for elections of different significance (for instance political elections vs. elections in associations).

Electronic voting systems

Ovaj rad daje prikaz elektroničkog glasovanja, koje sve veći broj država testira i implementira, s više ili manje uspjeha. Dosadašnje metode glasovanja, kao što su glasački listići, bušene kartice, optičko skeniranje i strojevi s polugom, sadrže određene nedostatke, primjerice sigurnosne rizike ili velike troškove, zbog čega se sve više pozornosti pridaje elektroničkom glasovanju kao novoj metodi glasovanja. Kako bi elektroničko glasovanje u određenoj državi bilo što učinkovitije, razna tijela poput Vijeća Europe objavila su smjernice i standarde za njegovo uvođenje, pri čemu se naglasak stavlja na pristupačnost, transparentnost te ponajviše na sigurnost sustava. Ispravno implementirani sustavi za elektroničko glasovanje mogu uvelike pridonijeti brzini i učinkovitosti izbornog procesa; međutim, na konkretnim su primjerima neispravnost uređaja i simulirani, ali i stvarni napadi pokazali da ni ova metoda ne može u potpunosti štititi tajnost glasovanja i integritet izbora. Od triju država čije je korištenje elektroničkog glasovanja opisano u ovom radu (Sjedinjene Američke Države, Estonija i Belgija) jedino ga Estonija koristi uspješno i učinkovito; razlog vjerojatno leži u činjenici da Estonija dugi niz godina koristi internet za vladine usluge te je elektroničko glasovanje bilo logičan potez. Elektroničko glasovanje u Hrvatskoj na državnoj razini trenutačno postoji jedino kao tema medijskih rasprava; telekomunikacijski stručnjaci, međutim, tvrde da potrebna infrastruktura postoji, stoga preostaje vidjeti hoće li i Hrvatska u budućnosti implementirati, ili barem testirati elektroničko glasovanje.This paper gives an overview of electronic voting, which is being tested and implemented by an increasing number of countries, with varying degrees of success. Voting methods that have been used so far, such as paper ballots, punch cards, optical scanning and mechanical lever voting machines, each have their own drawbacks, such as safety risks or high financial costs, which is the reason why more attention is being paid to electronic voting as a new voting method. In order for electronic voting to be as efficient as possible, various organizations, such as the Council of Europe, have published guidelines and standards for its implementation, with the focus set on accessibility, transparency and, mainly, the security of the system. Properly implemented electronic voting systems can significantly improve the speed and efficiency of the electoral process; however, concrete examples show how device malfunction and simulated and real cyberattacks can decrease the secrecy and integrity of elections. Out of the three countries whose electronic voting system use has been described in this paper (the United States of America, Estonia, and Belgium), Estonia seems to be the only one using it successfully and efficiently. The underlying reason may be the fact that Estonia has been using the Internet to provide governmental services for a number of years; therefore, the transition to electronic voting was the logical next step. National-level electronic voting in Croatia currently only exists as a public debate topic. Telecommunication experts, however, claim that the country possesses the required infrastructure; whether Croatia will implement, or at least try out electronic voting in the future, remains to be seen

Electronic voting: Methods and protocols

The act of casting a ballot during an election cycle has been plagued by a number of problems, both intrinsic and extraneous. The old-fashioned paper ballot solves a number of problems, but creates its own. The clear 21st Century solution is the use of an automated electronic system for collection and tallying of votes, but the attitude of the general populace towards these systems has been overwhelmingly negative, supported in some cases by fraud and abuse. The purpose of this thesis is to do a broad survey of systems available on the market now (both in industry and academia) and then compare and contrast these systems to an “ideal” system, which we attempt to define. To do this we survey academic and commercial literature from many sources and selected the most popular, current, or interesting of the designs—then compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of these designs. What we discovered is that devices presented by industry are not only closed-box (which makes them inherently untrustworthy), but also largely inept in security and/or redundancy. Conversely, systems presented by academia are relatively strong in security and redundancy, but lack in ease-of-use or miss helpful features found on industry devices. To combat these perceived weaknesses, we present a prototype of one system which has not previously been implemented, described in Wang [1]. This system brings together many ideas from academia to solve a significant number of the issues plaguing electronic voting machines. We present this solution in its entirety as open-source software for review by the cryptographic and computer science community. In addition to an electronic voting implementation this solution includes a graphical user interface, a re-encryption mix network, and several decryption methods including threshold decryption. All of these items are described in-depth by this thesis. However, as we discuss in the conclusion, this solution falls short in some areas as well. We earmark these problem areas for future research and discuss alternate paths forward

Secure voting in the cloud using homomorphic encryption and mobile agents

While governments are transitioning to the cloud to leverage efficiency, transparency and accessibility advantages, public opinion - the backbone of democracy - is being left behind. Statistics show that traditional paper voting is failing to reach the technological-savvy generation, with voter turnout decreasing every election for many first-world countries. Remote electronic voting is a possible solution facilitator to this problem, but it still faces several security, privacy and accountability concerns. This paper introduces a practical application of partially homomorphic encryption to help address these challenges. We describe a cloud-based mobile electronic voting scheme, evaluating its security against a list of requirements, and benchmarking performance on the cloud and mobile devices. In order to protect voter privacy, we propose moving away from a public bulletin board so that no individual cipher votes are saved, while still allowing vote verification. As the majority of the security threats faced by electronic voting are from the underlying system, we also introduce the novel concept of using a dedicated hardware server for homomorphic tallying and decryption