Individual Voters Research Articles

Advancing E-Voting Security: Biometrics-Enhanced Blockchain for Privacy and VerifiAbility (Bebpv)

Achieving individual verifiability and receipt-freeness in e-voting systems poses a complex challenge. Mechanisms that allow voters to confirm their votes may also inadvertently enable them to show proof of their choices to others, thus jeopardizing vote privacy. This creates a critical tension between two essential objectives: enabling individual verifiability, where voters trust the system to accurately count their votes, and maintaining receipt-freeness, where the system prevents exploitation and coercion. The Biometrics-Enhanced Blockchain for Privacy and Verifiability (BEBPV) system proposed in this study addresses this challenge by employing facial biometric authentication and trusted node centres for post-voting verification; the biometric facial authentication reduces risks associated with the resale of voting credentials and removes the need for voters to recall complex passwords, while the post-voting verification process available at secure, trusted node centers allows voters to confirm their votes without retaining any proof that could be shared with third parties, thus upholding receipt-freeness. These mechanisms collectively ensure that individual votes are verifiable, while simultaneously safeguarding against coercion and vote-buying through receipt freeness. The feasibility of the BEBPV system is demonstrated through smart contract implementation for both the voting phase and post voting phase. Additionally, the system is validated on several essential attributes of an e-voting, including fairness, universal verifiability, eligibility and privacy. A technical evaluation indicates a transaction cost of 166,662 gas per vote cast.

Digital Voting with Blockchain using Interplanetary File System and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance

Traditional voting schemes are often overwhelmed by problems such as deception, influence, and incompetence, which can be resolved by applying blockchain technology with transparency, decentralization, and immutability. This study proposes a safe and indisputable digital voting system with blockchain technology to maintain the integrity of the voting procedure. The reliability and privacy of the voting procedure are upheld with distributed ledger technology and cryptographic techniques. The essence of the proposed method is the immutability of the blockchain ledger, which ensures a tamper-proof record of each cast vote, promoting transparency and offering a way of audit for free verification. The proposed method employs cryptographic protocols to protect individual votes while preserving complete transparency and verifiability of the voting procedure. The InterPlanetary Filesystem (IPFS) is applied to ensure data integrity. Moreover, the practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) consensus algorithm is utilized to remove glitches in distributed settings. The proposed approach provides a decentralized platform where voters can cast their votes from anywhere without difficulty using an internet connection, eliminating the need for physical ballot papers and polling stations. Using immutable ledger and cryptographic security aspects in blockchain, the reliability of the voting procedure can be protected while maintaining voter anonymity and confidentiality. Finally, it is shown that the proposed scheme outweighs other existing approaches.

The Effects of Personality Traits, Environmental Attitudes, and Demographic Factors on Green Party Support in Canada

Abstract By appealing to public concern over environmental issues, Green parties have emerged to gain secure positions in several party systems. However, in Canada, we know very little about why people support the Green Party. This research note draws upon the Canadian Election Study (CES) to explore the ways in which demographic factors, personality traits and individual environmentalism impact vote choice. Theorizing Green Party support as a form of pro-environmental behaviour, we build a model that tests the impact of demographic factors and personality traits as mediated through environmental attitudes. It finds that, while pro-environmental policy attitudes are the strongest predictor of Green Party support, several demographic factors and personality traits—specifically conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness and extraversion—have an effect.

Individual representation in approval-based committee voting

When selecting multiple candidates based on approval preferences of voters, the proportional representation of voters’ opinions is an important and well-studied desideratum. Existing criteria for evaluating the representativeness of outcomes focus on groups of voters and demand that sufficiently large and cohesive groups are “represented” in the sense that candidates approved by some group members are selected. Crucially, these criteria say nothing about the representation of individual voters, even if these voters are members of groups that deserve representation. In this paper, we formalize the concept of individual representation (IR) and explore to which extent, and under which circumstances, it can be achieved. We show that checking whether an IR outcome exists is computationally intractable, and we verify that all common approval-based voting rules may fail to provide IR even in cases where this is possible. We then focus on domain restrictions and establish an interesting contrast between “voter interval” and “candidate interval” preferences. This contrast can also be observed in our experimental results, where we analyze the attainability of IR for realistic preference profiles.

Political Breakthrough in a Rural Community during the 2011 Sarawak State Election: An Ethnographic Perspective

This article draws on empirical data and ethnographic evidence as a springboard to explore issues affecting narratives and observations made during the 2011 Sarawak State Election. It throws light on ways in which communities and cultures at the periphery of the Malaysian nation state grapple with the potentials and consequences of elections in the process of economic, political and social transformation. Eschewing aspects of candidates’ selections, electoral campaign process and actual voting behaviour of individual voters, the main analysis is of the formulation of local understandings and meanings of the state elections in two rural settlements of Ba’ Kelalan and Bario located close to the border between Sarawak and Kalimantan. This article suggests that an account of their experiences is a necessity in order to understand what functions and whose interest elections serve, and most importantly what election actually does and means within particular circumstances of local history. As a political phenomenon, elections can look different from the perspective of those close to the centre of power in contrast to those with little power within a political hierarchy.

A Multidimensional System of Proportional Representation

ABSTRACT In a representative deliberative democracy, a subset of the population—a committee—is selected to enter into deliberations as well as to make decisions on its behalf. In order to make a system of proportional representation fair to individual voters, the deliberations and decisions of the committee should be as close to deliberations and decisions in the ideal direct democracy where all are able to participate. The Chamberlin-Courant system claims to achieve this with its committee selection rule and voting weight distribution among committee members. After offering a novel streamlined presentation of the Chamberlin-Courant system, I argue that it in fact does not guarantee fairness to the individual voter because it does not take sufficient account of the fact that the satisfactoriness of a representative for an individual may vary per issue. I then propose an alternative—the multidimensional system—that is able to do exactly this. I then connect formal political theory with statistics on the use of voting guides to further motivate the proposed system and show that it is feasible to implement.

Legislative behavior in the French Senate: A new dataset from the Fifth Republic

This research note presents a new dataset on the French Senate. We provide demographic (1968–2017) and electoral (1983–2020) data for all Senate districts, biographical and political characteristics for all senators who served during the Fifth Republic (1959–2017), and data on roll-call votes (RCVs), individual senator's votes in relation to them, and the corresponding bill content (1996–2017). In this note, we describe the structure of our datasets, provide descriptive information on key variables, highlight temporal shifts in ideological trends in the French Senate, and discuss possible future research topics. We anticipate these data will make an important addition to the rapidly growing literature on upper chambers and legislative dynamics.

Beyond the party push: Gender differences in voters’ persuasion

Despite ongoing efforts to bridge gender disparities, women continue to be underrepresented in political spheres. This paper proposes a novel explanation for the female disadvantage in electoral success, focusing on politicians’ capacity to broaden their electoral base and appeal to voters from opposing parties. Drawing on Swiss elections, this paper leverages various aspects of the electoral system. In Switzerland, the electoral process is characterized by open lists, allowing voters to select candidates within their preferred party, and cross-voting, enabling them to choose candidates from other party lists. Additionally, electoral registers provide data on the number of preference votes garnered by each candidate, categorized by the voter’s preferred party. The analysis reveals that individual preference votes play a pivotal role in driving gender disparities in candidates’ electoral achievements. While the gender gap in preferences expressed by supporters of a particular party is less robust, male politicians outperform their female counterparts significantly in collecting preference votes through cross-voting. This implies that male politicians are more skilled at persuading voters from rival parties. These findings, motivated by various underlying mechanisms, carry considerable policy implications concerning the approach to addressing gender inequalities in politics.

Self-reported Ethnicity Changes over Time: A Population Level Study using Public Voter Databases

ObjectivesAdministrative databases such as voter registries contain a wealth of information about a large proportion of a population. This is especially true when longitudinal information about individuals is available, such as changes in their names, addresses, or self-reported ethnic attributes. Apparent changes in ethnic attributes might be due to perceptions of majority evaluations of ethnic groups. In this project, we analysed snapshots of a publicly available US voter database from 2015 to 2022, exploring if and how recent presidential elections impacted changes in voters' self-reported ethnic attributes. ApproachUsing bi-monthly snapshots of a publicly available US voter database from 2015 to 2022, we generated cohorts by linking active voters during seven twelve-month periods (2015/16 to 2021/22). These seven time periods included one mid-term and two presidential elections, and four control time spans before, between, and after these elections. We compared changes in self-reported ethnic attributes of voters during the times of elections versus the control time periods. ResultsPreliminary results reveal a substantial change to self-reported ethnic attributes during the periods leading to an election. A majority of such changes are by individuals from a specific ethnic group choosing not to report an ethnicity, an indication of their preference to not disclose ethnicity-related sensitive information. ConclusionsWe have shown how a publicly available voter database can be used to explore how self-reported ethnic attributes are modified by individual voters over time, and how the prevalence of such changes is influenced by political events such as presidential elections.

Anonymous voting using distributed ledger-assisted secure multi-party computation

High voter turnout in elections and referendums is desirable to ensure a robust democracy. Secure electronic voting is a vision for the future of elections and referendums. Such a system can counteract factors hindering strong voter turnout such as the requirement of physical presence during limited hours at polling stations. However, this vision brings transparency and confidentiality requirements that render the design of such solutions challenging. Specifically, the counting implementation must support reproducibility, and the choice of individual voters must remain confidential. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a novel referendum protocol that ensures transparency, confidentiality, and integrity, in trustless networks. The protocol is built by combining secure multi-party computation and distributed ledger technology, e.g., a Blockchain. The persistence and immutability of the protocol communication allow verifiability of the referendum outcome by any participant. Voters therefore do not need to trust third parties. We provide a formal description and conduct a thorough security evaluation of our proposal.

Voting for insider trading regulation. An experimental study of informed and uninformed traders’ preferences

Capital markets often regulate insider trading, but whether such regulation aligns with traders’ preferences is an open question. This study examined traders’ regulation preferences conditional on their prospects of becoming informed. Of 64 referenda, traders decided 41 (64%) against regulation. Moreover, traders’ prospects of becoming informed significantly impacted the outcomes of the referenda. In markets in which a group of traders has no chance of receiving inside information, 47% of the referenda are decided against regulation. When all traders could get such information, 81% are. Individual votes reveal that traders who know they will remain uninformed support regulation in 69.27% of the cases, while informed traders do so only 8.33% of the time. Traders who may or may not become informed support regulation 33.33% of the time.

Undermining liberal international organizations from within: Evidence from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

AbstractInternational organizations promoting democratic governance and human rights are increasingly challenged by some of their own member states. To better understand this dynamic, we propose a distinction between the illiberal ideology of political parties and their regime environment, aiming to examine the international behavior of actors extending beyond autocratic governments. We argue that the domestic regime environment plays a pivotal role in influencing the extent to which illiberal parties engage in contestation to undermine liberal norms on the international stage. We expect contestation behavior to be primarily driven by illiberal parties seeking to diminish the influence of liberal international politics on domestic power structures. Moreover, we contend that government participation moderates illiberal parties’ contestation behavior. To test our expectations empirically, we study roll call votes in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), one of the most powerful international parliaments promoting liberal values. Drawing on an original dataset that records approximately 500,000 individual votes cast in PACE decisions, we find evidence for substantive contestation by illiberal parties, especially those representing illiberal regimes. Only illiberal governments in liberal systems moderate themselves at the amendment stage. Our study has implications for the potential threat that emerging illiberal actors pose to international liberal institutions.

Policy Impact and Voter Mobilization: Evidence from Farmers’ Trade War Experiences

How does the extent of policy benefits—not simply their presence—affect political engagement? While fundamental to understanding the electoral implications of economic policymaking, addressing this question is challenging due to the difficulty of measuring individual voters’ policy outcomes. We examine a natural experiment embedded in President Trump’s Market Facilitation Program (MFP), which aided a core Republican constituency: farmers harmed by his 2018 trade war. Due to idiosyncrasies of program design, the MFP undercompensated some farmers for their trade war losses—and significantly overcompensated others—based solely on their 2018 crop portfolios. Analyzing over 165,000 affected voters, we show that improved compensation outcomes had negligible impacts on Republican farmers’ midterm turnout and campaign contributions, even though such variation in benefits significantly affected farmers’ propensity to view the intervention as helpful. This null result is important—our estimates suggest that even highly salient variation in policy outcomes may have limited mobilizing capacity.

Political Microtargeting – on the Possibility of a Polish Version of the American Cambridge Analytica Scandal from 2016

The use of political microtargeting, a technique of political market segmentation based on an algorithm that allows personalising campaign materials catered to individual voters, is on the rise with political campaigns across the world. Trump’s 2016 campaign provides an example of it being used in an ethically-questionable way that entails personal data infringement. The article looks at the possibility of using it in a similar way in Poland. To this end, the author presents a comparative analysis of a number of elements that make up the political landscapes of the United States and Poland.

Treiber, Hubert (2021). Die „rückwärtsgewandte Expertenreform“ – Eine verwaltungswissenschaftliche Studie zur Großen Strafrechtsreform der 1950er Jahre. Halle an der Saale: Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg. 169 Seiten. ISBN: 978-3-86977-244-8.

The empirical study applies cluster analyses to records of the commission on criminal justice reform. By analysing discrepancies in the individual voting behaviour of the commission members, the study identifies distinct clusters which coincide with the commission members’ professional background: While the commission members with a scientific background hardly ever form a homogenous group, commission members who practice law e. g. as judges or who are public servants show a more consistent behaviour. This is attributed to the distinct role perceptions within the respective profession. Overall, the commission members represented mostly conservative values, leading to a criminal justice reform with strong reference to previous drafts. With this in mind, the book furthermore analyses rhetorical strategies used within the legal profession to obscure a person’s involvement in the Nazi-Regime.

An Efficient Blockchain Enabled Score Voting with Face Recognition

The security considerations of the votes are based on blockchain technology using cryptographic hashes to secure end-to-end verification. To this end, a successful vote cast is considered as a transaction within the blockchain of the voting application. Therefore, a vote cast is added as a new block (after successful mining) in the blockchain as well as being recorded in data tables at the backend of the database. The system ensures only one-person, one-vote (democracy) property of voting systems. This is achieved by using the voter’s unique face image, which is matched at the beginning of every voting attempt to prevent double voting. The Face Recognition is the study of physical or behavioral characteristics of human being used for the identification of person. So implement real time authentication system using face biometrics for authorized the person for online voting system. This work claims to score voting method and data management challenges in blockchain and provides an improved manifestation of the electronic voting process. Score-based voting methods, also known as range voting or rated voting, are electoral systems where voters are allowed to express their preferences for candidates or options by assigning numerical scores to them. Unlike traditional voting methods where voters choose a single candidate, score-based systems enable voters to provide a more nuanced and detailed assessment of their preferences. It is important here to note that cryptographic hash for a voter is the unique hash of voter by which voter is known in the blockchain. This property facilitates achieving verifiability of the overall voting process. Furthermore, this id is hidden and no one can view it even a system operator cannot view this hash therefore achieving privacy of individual voters.

Residential mobility and persistently depressed voting among disadvantaged adults in a large housing experiment

This study examines the impact of residential mobility on electoral participation among the poor by matching data from Moving to Opportunity, a US-based multicity housing-mobility experiment, with nationwide individual voter data. Nearly all participants in the experiment were Black and Hispanic families who originally lived in high-poverty public housing developments. Notably, the study finds that receiving a housing voucher to move to a low-poverty neighborhood decreased adult participants' voter participation for nearly two decades-a negative impact equal to or outpacing that of the most effective get-out-the-vote campaigns in absolute magnitude. This finding has important implications for understanding residential mobility as a long-run depressant of voter turnout among extremely low-income adults.

An SGX-based online voting protocol with maximum voter privacy

Electronic voting (E-voting), a crucial method in modern society, balances efficiency with the need for equity, reliability, and privacy to accurately record votes and maintain democracy. However, there is the challenge of potential leakage of voting information in scenarios where administrators of voting system may act maliciously. Moreover, contemporary collaborative counting methods face a significant increase in the cost of storage and heightened communication overhead in large-scale e-voting. In response, this paper proposes an innovative online voting protocol that integrates Intel SGX, homomorphic encryption, and zero-knowledge proof. This protocol aims to cut down the cost of communication and storage while maximizing the protection of voter privacy. The protocol relies on SGX to provide a trusted execution environment for the voting process, guarding against malicious attacks from external software or high-privileged administrators. In the proposed protocol, voters apply homomorphic encryption algorithms to locally encrypt their ballots, no longer relying on other entities (such as the voting system or SGX) for encryption. Then the encrypted ballots are submitted to SGX to mitigate the threat of data leakage in SGX. Through the adoption of zero-knowledge proof technology, the voting protocol can verify the legitimacy of votes without revealing their content. The proposed solution introduces the SGXVOT architecture, comprising two enclaves – Enclave V responsible for tallying individual encrypted votes, and Enclave T responsible for decrypting and publishing voting results. This design ensures that individual voters’ ballots remain in ciphertext, preserving the confidentiality of votes and voter privacy. Additionally, the protocol incorporates a “One-Time Pad” encryption communication protocol to guarantee the confidentiality of communication messages between Enclave V and Enclave T. The thorough security analysis and performance evaluation demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed solution in terms of security, practicality, and scalability.

With or without the European Union: the convention for the protection of the Black Sea against pollution

Abstract The Black Sea is an enclosed sea surrounded by six coastal countries, of which Bulgaria and Romania are EU Member States. The Convention for the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution was ratified in 1994 by all coastal countries. This Convention is the only European regional sea convention to which the EU is not a Party. While Romania and Bulgaria are in favor of EU accession to the Convention, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine thus far have blocked accession. In this paper, we develop a negotiation model with endogenous enforcement and exogenous fraud to analyze the different positions of groups of coastal countries relative to EU accession to the Convention. Our model contributes to defining a proposal that the EU could make to the opposing states such that they accept the EU as a Party to the Convention. In that context we investigate also whether Romania and Bulgaria might be better off delegating their decision power to the EU, rather than retaining their individual voting rights.

Local Fiscal Response to State Preemption: A Case Study of Massachusetts’ Proposition 2½ Tax Referendum

Abstract State preemption in the form of tax and expenditure limits significantly limits local revenue-raising capacity. To gain insights into how local governments respond to fiscal preemption through direct democracy, this study focuses on tax referenda that override the levy limit set by Proposition 2½ in Massachusetts. Analyzing a sample of 320 municipalities from 2010 to 2021, we investigate the influence of fiscal slack resources and tax burden on the levy limit overrides and exclusions. Our analysis breaks down the tax referendum process into two stages, highlighting the involvement of different decision-makers: local officials proposing the referendum and individual voters approving it. We find that municipalities are motivated to seek tax referenda due to diminishing fiscal slack resources, yet the tax burden on residents can discourage such pursuits.