Category: Elections

E2E Verifiable Voting

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I learned about 2 kinds of vote fraud this week. In mid-texas, there are folks who sell legit votes. E.g. 500 votes for $250.
 
In the 1950’s, there were chairs who would vote for registered voters who didn’t show up. In one case, according to the signature sheet, 200 people showed up in the last 2 minutes before the poll closed … in alphabetical order.
 
Individual voter fraud which is used as an excuse for suppression is not the problem. However, pulling up the registration by swiping an ID could prevent the second problem. (Of course, I think this only happens in early voting).
 
An interesting cryptographical puzzle …
 
How do you provide the voter proof their vote is counted in the count without simultaneously doing the following?
 
– Providing the voter proof outside the voting booth of their specific votes exposing the voter to the possibility of exploitation.
– Giving the election workers the ability to manipulate the vote or the vote counts.
– Giving the government the ability to tie a specific vote to a specific identity under any condition.
 
For example, you could use a RSA private A and public B key pair and a secure hash of the user’s vote combined with a random number. Store the secure hash and encrypt the secure hash with the A-key against the voter’s name. Give the secure hash and the encrypted secure hash to the voter as a confirmation number.
 
The voter could use the B key to decrypt the encrypted hash to verify this against the secure hash. Likewise, the voter could present the secure hash to prove they voted in a certain election.
 
That covers off proof their vote was recorded but how do you prove it was counted?
 
I gave up and googled “how do you cryptographically prove a vote was counted?” and what do you know there is this Scientific American Blog entry talking about and to Ron Rivest (the ‘R’ of RSA). A couple of more links/searches led to wikipedia page below.
 
And, like, wow, it is called E2E verifiable voting and there are some (many?) options. Some have even been used in real elections.
 
I want this now. Who doesn’t?