Design and prototype of a coercion-resistant, voter verifiable electronic voting system

Abstract

Abstract — In elections, it is important that voters be able to verify that the tally reflects the sum of the votes that were actually cast, as they were intended to be cast. It is also important that voters not be subject to coercion from adversaries. Currently most proposed voting systems fall short: they either do not provide both properties, or require the voter to be a computer. In this paper, we present a new voting system that uses voter knowledge to allow voter verification by using a receipt that is uninformative for a coercer without access to the voting machine or the contents of the cast ballots. Our system does not assume any trust in the voting machine, but requires a few other assumptions which we believe to be reasonable in the real-world situation. A basic prototype of this system is available on our website. I