Every Vote Counts: Ensuring Integrity in Large-Scale DRE-based Electronic Voting

Feng Hao; Matthew Nicolas Kreeger

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Paper 2010/452

Every Vote Counts: Ensuring Integrity in Large-Scale DRE-based Electronic Voting

Feng Hao and Matthew Nicolas Kreeger

Abstract

This paper presents a new and complete cryptographic e-voting system, called Direct Recording Electronic with Integrity (DRE-i). The DRE is a widely deployed voting system that commonly uses touch-screen technology to directly record votes. However, a lack of tallying integrity has been considered the most contentious problem with the DRE system. In this work, we take a broad interpretation of the DRE: which includes not only touch-screen machines, as deployed at polling stations, but also remote voting systems conducted over the Internet or mobile phones. In all cases, the system records votes directly. The DRE-i protocol is generic for both on-site and remote voting; it provides a drop-in mathematical solution to ensure tallying integrity even if the DRE machine is completely corrupted. Besides the tallying integrity, we also describe procedural means to protect voter's privacy in a complete system. As compared with the currently well-known Helios e-voting system, our work represents a significant improvement in two main aspects. First, it permits a thin client: a web-based implementation of DRE-i does not require any Java plug-in to be installed or Javascript to be enabled. Second, it is self-tallying: as we adopt a novel technique to encrypt votes, anyone can tally votes by simply multiplying ciphertexts without needing any private keys or tallying authority involvement.

Note: Revisons: 2010-08-24: Added acknowledgement 2011-02-09: Improved writing with more explanation on background and motivation

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Unknown where it was published
Keywords: Electronic Voting DRE internet voting
Contact author(s): haofeng66 @ gmail com
History: 2011-02-09: last of 4 revisions; 2010-08-24: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2010/452
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2010/452,
      author = {Feng Hao and Matthew Nicolas Kreeger},
      title = {Every Vote Counts: Ensuring Integrity in Large-Scale DRE-based Electronic Voting},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2010/452},
      year = {2010},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/452}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2010/452}
}