75 research outputs found
An analysis of New South Wales electronic vote counting
We re-examine the 2012 local government elections in New South Wales,
Australia. The count was conducted electronically using a randomised form of
the Single Transferable Vote (STV). It was already well known that randomness
does make a difference to outcomes in some seats. We describe how the process
could be amended to include a demonstration that the randomness was chosen
fairly.
Second, and more significantly, we found an error in the official counting
software, which caused a mistake in the count in the council of Griffith, where
candidate Rina Mercuri narrowly missed out on a seat. We believe the software
error incorrectly decreased Mercuri's winning probability to about
10%---according to our count she should have won with 91% probability.
The NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) corrected their code when we pointed out
the error, and made their own announcement.
We have since investigated the 2016 local government election (held after
correcting the error above) and found two new errors. We notified the NSWEC
about these errors a few days after they posted the results
Extending Helios Towards Private Eligibility Verifiability
We show how to extend the Helios voting system to provide eligibility verifiability without revealing who voted which we call private eligibility verifiability. The main idea is that real votes are hidden in a crowd of null votes that are cast by others but are indistinguishable from those of the eligible voter. This extended Helios scheme also improves Helios towards receipt-freeness
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