Secrecy and Verifiability: An Introduction to Electronic Voting
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Democracies are built upon secure and reliable voting systems. Electronic voting systems seek to replace ballot papers and boxes with computer hardware and software. Proposed electronic election schemes have been subjected to scrutiny, with researchers spotting inherent faults and weaknesses. Inspired by physical voting systems, we argue that any electronic voting system needs two essential properties: ballot secrecy and verifiability. These properties seemingly work against each other. An election scheme that is a complete black box offers ballot secrecy, but verification of the outcome is impossible. This challenge can be tackled using standard tools from modern cryptography, reaching a balance that delivers both properties. This tutorial makes these ideas accessible to readers outside electronic voting. We introduce fundamental concepts such as asymmetric and homomorphic encryption, which we use to describe a general electronic election scheme while keeping mathematical formalism minimal. We outline game-based cryptography, a standard approach in modern cryptography, and introduce notation for formulating elections as games. We then give precise definitions of ballot secrecy and verifiability in the framework of game-based cryptography. A principal aim is introducing modern research approaches to electronic voting.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
ballot secrecy
verifiability
electronic voting
cryptography
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
game-based cryptography
ballot secrecy
verifiability
homomorphic encryption
electronic voting
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