A Stateless Transparent Voting Machine

2025-09-23

AI Summary

Existing electronic voting systems suffer from deficiencies in transparency, security, usability, and accessibility. To address these challenges, this paper proposes and implements a Stateless Transparent Voting Machine (STVM). STVM boots exclusively from read-only Blu-ray Disc Recordable (BD-R) media on diskless hardware, ensuring state reset upon every reboot and eliminating persistent malware infection vectors. It employs a transparent interactive printing interface that enables voters to verify ballot content in real time during marking, transforming the physical ballot into a verifiable, interactive medium. Built on an open-source software stack and adhering to universal design principles, STVM achieves high security and strong auditability while significantly improving accessibility for diverse users, including persons with disabilities. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that STVM effectively mitigates persistent threats and voter errors, enhances real-time ballot verification, and strengthens public trust in electoral integrity.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Voting
• Machine Learning: Transparent, Interpretable, Explainable ML
• Computer Vision: Interpretability, Explainability, and Transparency

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Transparency and security are essential in our voting system, and voting machines. This paper describes an implementation of a stateless, transparent voting machine (STVM). The STVM is a ballot marking device (BMD) that uses a transparent, interactive printing interface where voters can verify their paper ballots as they fill out the ballot. The transparent interface turns the paper ballot into an interactive interface. In this architecture, stateless describes the machine's boot sequence, where no information is stored or passed forward between reboots. The machine does not have a hard drive. Instead, it boots and runs from read-only media. This STVM design utilizes a Blu-ray Disc ROM (BD-R) to boot the voting software. This system's statelessness and the transparent interactive printing interface make this design the most secure BMD for voting. Unlike other voting methods, this system incorporates high usability, accessibility, and security for all voters. The STVM uses an open-source voting system that has a universally designed interface, making the system accessible for all voters independent of their ability or disability. This system can make voting safer by simultaneously addressing the issue of voters noticing a vote flip and making it difficult for a hack to persist or go unmitigated.

Problem

• Designing a stateless transparent voting machine for secure elections
• Creating a ballot marking device with verifiable paper ballots
• Ensuring voting system accessibility while preventing persistent hacking

Innovation

• Stateless boot from read-only Blu-ray Disc
• Transparent interactive printing interface for verification
• Open-source universally designed accessible voting system