Voter Privacy Research Articles

Технология блокчейн на выборах: прошлое, настоящее и будущее

The purpose of the research is to use blockchain technology in the electoral process. The study was conducted on the example of blockchain technologies used in elections in the United States, Canada, Australia, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, Spain, Russia and other countries. The methodological basis of the research is based on the methods of comparative analysis and component analysis of definitions. Empirical methods of expert assessment and interviewing were used. The pros and cons of blockchain technologies and the possibility of using this innovative technology in elections of different levels are revealed. The advantages of inclusive blockchain technology include the mobility and accessibility of voting; minimizing the costs of organizing and conducting elections; de-bureaucratization by reducing the staff of election commissions; the possibility of excluding the impact on voters from participants in the electoral process; reducing the time for processing ballots and determining the results of voting; increasing the level of trust in electoral procedures on the part of citizens who usually do not participate in voting. Among the disadvantages of blockchain technologies, we can highlight: technical failures and hacker cyber-attacks; the possibility of hackers using data about voters, in case of hacking electronic databases; violation of the secrecy of voting.

Voter Privacy and Big-Data Elections

Big data and analytics have changed politics, with serious implications for the protection of personal privacy and for democracy. Political parties now hold large amounts of personal information about the individuals from whom they seek political contributions and, at election time, votes. This voter data is used for a variety of purposes, including voter contact and turnout, fundraising, honing of political messaging, and microtargeted communications designed specifically to appeal to small subsets of voters. Yet both privacy laws and election laws in Canada have failed to keep up with these developments in political campaigning and are in need of reform to protect voter privacy. We provide an overview of big data campaign practices, analyze the gaps in Canadian federal privacy and election law that enable such practices, and offer recommendations to amend federal laws to address the threats to voter privacy posed by big data election campaigns.

Electronic voting technologies

The article describes modern electronic voting technologies used in various countries of the world, such as Estonia, the United States, countries of the African continent, and others. The authors also consider the main technologies of electronic voting, which are currently widely used in Russia. With the development of digital technologies, there is a tendency for their ubiquity. Various democratic institutions, in turn, have excellent potential for digitalization. One of the results of this synergy was the emergence of such a phenomenon as electronic voting. Most often, electronic voting is classified according to the principle of their interaction with the voter. The first category is remote electronic voting, which includes online voting. This type of electronic voting is used for remote registration of the will of voters. Citizens, instead of visiting a polling station, vote using a home or work personal computer that is connected to the Internet. Can also use the computers installed in the booths in public places – in schools, libraries, etc. The second category in the above classification is voting using electronic means at polling stations. These include so-called «electronic» ballot boxes, electronic technical means for automating vote counting, and various automated systems for automating the election process as a whole and its various stages separately. In addition to considering the methods and technologies of electronic voting, the article also partially describes the methods and problems associated with the identification and formation of voter lists in electronic voting. The authors consider, among other things, the advantages and disadvantages of elective modern technologies. The main advantages of using electronic voting include automating the voting procedure, reducing financial and time costs, and improving the convenience of voting for certain categories of citizens. The disadvantages of the electronic voting technologies used are the lack of public confidence in electronic forms of voting, the likely violation of the principle of secrecy of voting, technical complexity, insufficient reliability compared to «traditional» methods of voting and summing up results, as well as problems with voter identification.

A Secure End-to-End Verifiable Internet-Voting System Using Identity-Based Blind Signature

The end-to-end (E2E) verification enables a voter to check if his ballot is recorded as he intended and the public to check if the system has correctly counted all of the recorded ballots. The Internet voting systems based on the principle of E2E verifiability have many challenges; the most important is its security. Several E2E voting systems have been discussed in the last decade in terms of analyzing the e-voting system and formalizing its security requirements. This article presents an E2E verifiable internet voting system that provides mobility to a voter and allows him to cast his vote secretly in public computer with the benefit of early voting. The proposed system aims to support the election process universally by using the voter's unique identification and biometric features. We propose a new identity-based blind signature scheme that ensures the voter's anonymity. We adopt the Boneh–Lynn–Shacham short signature scheme that ensures the vote privacy with the least ballot size. The system provides a digital witness to a voter that enables him to check whether his vote is recorded as he meant and the public to check if all the recorded ballots are counted correctly. The privacy of the proposed system is achieved under the well-known elliptic curve discrete logarithm and gap Diffie–Hellman assumptions.

HSE-Voting: A secure high-efficiency electronic voting scheme based on homomorphic signcryption

In most electronic voting schemes, a voter signs his/her ballot using a digital signature algorithm before submission to ensure that the ballot is generated by himself/herself, which results that the workload of the verification process in ballot tallying increases with the number of voters and candidates. In this paper we present a new electronic voting scheme, HSE-voting, to lighten the workload of tallying. The cryptographic approach of this scheme is homomorphic signcryption, whose signature homomorphism enables that the number of signature verifications depends on the number of candidates only, and the encryption homomorphism keeps ballots from being decrypted during the tallying process. Moreover, for voters, the encryption and signature of ballots can be completed in one step using the homomorphic signcryption. Finally, this paper gives proofs for the privacy of voters and the security and verifiability of voting, and provides a comparative analysis with the latest scheme.

Election System Based on Blockchain Technology

There is no uncertainty that the chroma currency is very popular for the transaction information stored in the block of blocks. To initiate the importance of blocking, there is only one distributed ledger in which data is stored, since many of the centers in the blockchain network limit enough records for these records. This document proposes a decision-making framework based on innovation to create a secure, unjustifiable, accurate and transparent framework for voter privacy. In addition, it is voted and declared in this context that the race has a short period of time, since it is automatically registered in the table. This framework also gives society confidence in its legislation when applying this technique. In this framework, an administrator can add a candidate and a voter to the block. In different hands, a voter can log into the framework and then decide in favor of a candidate that the details of the vote should be stored in the block. In addition, each square in the blockchain innovation that relates to the previous square contains the hash of the previous square, and each square contains explicit data based on the square footage. The hub is connected by a peer network in this framework, with all the hubs in the block site network that have a complete duplicate block.

Typing Messages for Free in Security Protocols

Security properties of cryptographic protocols are typically expressed as reachability or equivalence properties. Secrecy and authentication are examples of reachability properties, while privacy properties such as untraceability, vote secrecy, or anonymity are generally expressed as behavioral equivalence in a process algebra that models security protocols. Our main contribution is to reduce the search space for attacks for reachability as well as equivalence properties. Specifically, we show that if there is an attack then there is one that is well-typed. Our result holds for a large class of typing systems, a family of equational theories that encompasses all standard primitives, and protocols without else branches. For many standard protocols, we deduce that it is sufficient to look for attacks that follow the format of the messages expected in an honest execution, therefore considerably reducing the search space.

A Smart Card Oriented Secure Electronic Voting Machine Built on NTRU

Free and fair elections are indispensable to quantify the sentiments of the populace for forming the government of representatives in democratic countries. Due to its procedural variation from country to country and complexity, to maneuverer, it is a challenging task. Since the Orthodox paper-based electoral systems are slow and error-prone, therefore, a secure and efficient electoral system always remained a key area of research. Although a lot of literature is available on this topic. However, due to reported anomalies and weaknesses in American and France election in 2016, it once again has become a pivotal subject of research. In this article, we proposed a new secure and efficient electronic voting scheme based on public key cryptosystem dubbed as Number Theory Research Unit (NTRU). Furthermore, an efficient and robust three factors authentication protocol based on a personalized memorable password, a smartcard, and bioHash is proposed to validate the legitimacy of a voter for casting a legal vote. NTRU based blind signatures are used to preserve the anonymity and privacy of vote and voters, whereas the proficiency of secure and efficient counting of votes is achieved through NTRU based homomorphic tally. Non-coercibility and individual verifiability are attained through Mark Pledge scheme. The proposed applied electronic voting scheme is, secure, transparent and efficient for large scale elections.

EMPATIA

Participatory budgeting (PB) is currently one of the most widely adopted democratic innovations. ICT platforms are key enablers of PB processes, by supporting citizen engagement. They support the establishment of diverse participation channels to build candidate proposals, for the voting process, and for monitoring proposals' implementation. PB platforms differ from electronic voting systems, reflecting the intrinsic nature of PB processes. While vote secrecy and trustworthiness of voting results is still a major requirement, other factors weight in, such as the focus on the whole process and the need for engaging several citizens by providing multiple participation channels. PB processes take place at multiple scales (municipal, national) requiring flexible deployment and dimensioning approaches. EMPATIA is an ICT platform for PB, based on multiple dimensioning and deployment options that reflect the scenarios where PB tools are expected to operate. The evaluation results provide relevant inputs to the design and implementation of similar participatory and/or voting platforms.

Arduino – Based Electronic Voting Machine

The main objective of this paper is to design and implement Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) using fingerprint sensor for authentication. The design is based on the microcontroller (Arduino Mega 2560), fingerprint sensor for scanning voter’s fingerprint before voting, “2.4” TFT LCD screen for displaying the instructions and voter information, Buzzer, SD card reader. System database comprising password ID for all voters and fingerprint are stored in microcontroller for comparing and verification during polling. If already voter casted his vote and he/she trying to enter for second time into the electronic voting machine, then buzzer will alert the master user. The proposed Electronic Voting Machine will save the time and effort of voters as it is characterized by reliability and ease of use in addition to rapid response to users. At the end of the ballot, the result will be stored in flash memory through which the master user can retrieve and see them. During the construction of any electronic voting system, several aspects must consider, the most important is the privacy of voters and the accuracy of the voting process in addition to maintaining the security of data, this research provides a safe and reliable voting system.

SeVEP: Secure and Verifiable Electronic Polling System

Electronic polling systems promise benefits to voters such as accessibility and convenience that enable them to cast their votes at any time, from any Internet-connected computing device anywhere in the world. However, unlike traditional paper-based voting systems, an e-polling system introduces several security risks such as privacy of vote, unlinkability of a voter, voter coercion, secrecy of partial election results, verifiability, and poll integrity. The authenticity of a voter is another security concern, i.e., a voter must be identified through an authentication mechanism that prevents voting of unauthorized voters or multiple voting from authorized voters. Another security concern is the manipulation of votes by an infected (e.g., virus, malware, and so on) voting device. Since the voters use their personal devices to cast votes in an unsupervised environment, a malware-hosted device could make unauthorized modifications to the voter's voting choices. Many e-voting systems have been proposed, however, to date, all these schemes either fail to provide all the required security properties or are not practically feasible on light-weight computing devices. In this paper, we present a secure and verifiable polling system, SeVEP, that employs well-known cryptographic primitives to provide vote and voter's privacy, and poll integrity, confirms the identity of voters through a multifactor authentication scheme, enables multiple voting within the allowed polling period, prevents double voting, and achieves verifiability and uncoercibility in the presence of untrusted voting device. The security, performance, and comparative analysis in terms of security properties and cryptographic costs show that SeVEP is secure, verifiable, and practical e-polling system.

End-to-End Verifiable Electronic Voting System Using Delegated Proof of Stake On Blockchain

This paper aims to introduce a scalable blockchain based system for balloting. The system can maintain privacy of the individual voter, remaining publicly accountable, and tamper proof. Blockchain offers a distributed ledger of votes across the voting nodes such that no duplicate votes are allowed. We use Consensus algorithm to facilitate fast propagation of blocks of votes. Increased transaction speeds are achieved by delegating certain nodes as block producers, relying on them for delegated proof of stake. For increased accountability, we include the voter’s biometric data in the transaction. The pilot implementation showcased significant improvement with respect to currently followed balloting process in India. Response time of the proposed system is evaluated on different load levels on network, experimental results are promising, and we recommend the system for the large-scale implementation.

Problematyka rejestrowania oraz rozpowszechniania wizerunku i głosu wyborców oraz członków obwodowych komisji wyborczych – postulat de lege ferenda

In the article, the author describes the problem of registering and distributing the image and voice of voters and members of the electoral commissions. Among the issues discussed were the principle of secrecy of voting, scrutineer, social observers, international observers, the concept of image, its violation and distributing, the voter as a detail of the whole, the concept of gathering, the issue of preserving the image of the voter and limiting his civil rights in the light of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and RODO as well as circumstances repealing the illegality of perpetuating the image of the voter and members of the electoral commissions.

Markets in votes: Alienability, strict secrecy, and political clientelism

Standard rationales for the illegality of markets in votes are based on concerns over the undue influence of wealth and the erosion of civic responsibility that would result from the commodification of votes. I present an alternative rationale based on how the mere alienability of votes alters the strategic setting faced by political actors. The inalienability of votes ensure the strict secrecy of voting, that is, the inability of voters to communicate credibly to others the content of their votes. In doing so, it diminishes the credibility of all political actors’ clientelistic promises to reciprocate. By drastically reducing the transaction costs of vote exchanges, the legality of markets in votes would thus exacerbate the detrimental effects of political clientelism on the quality of democratic governments.

FALSIFICATION OF ELECTION DOCUMENTS

The article is devoted to the analysis of the basic structure of the crime provided for in Art. 142 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which are considered debatable. This crime, in the general structure of crimes against electoral rights is about 65%. This circumstance, according to the author, indicates the social conditionality of the criminal-legal prohibition, the public danger of an act that grossly violates the conditions of the legitimacy of state power. In law enforcement practice, criminal cases are practically not initiated, which is due to a number of circumstances, including the legal uncertainty of a number of signs of the crime. The article deals with the essence of impeding the citizen's free exercise of his electoral rights and the right to participate in a referendum, violating the secrecy of voting, as well as obstructing the work of election commissions, referendum commissions or the activities of members of these commissions related to his performance of duties by falsifying election documents. As a classification feature, the author indicates the addressee of the relevant document: the voter; candidate; initiative group for holding a referendum; member of the commission with a casting vote; precinct election commission. The article provides the concept of what is referred to mandatory documents that are drawn up by the precinct election commission when carrying out actions with ballot papers. These include: an act on the receipt of ballots from a higher commission indicating their number; Act on the repayment of spoiled ballots (in the presence of such facts); an act on the conduct of voting outside the relevant premises; Act on the invalidation of ballots that were in a mobile box for voting. At the same time, the author points out that this classification has not lost its significance even at the present time. The author suggests the notion of an election document to be fixed in a note to art. 142 of the Criminal Code. The article reveals the characteristics of the main elements of the crime provided for in Art. 142 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and compared with other views of Russian scientists.

Blockchain as a Solution to the United Statess Voter Turnout Issue

Compared to other developed nations, the United States fairs poorly when it comes to voter participation in general elections. Our elections are plagued by long lines, mechanical failure, human error, voter intimidation, and poorly enforced election laws. The state of our election’s process has left some social scientists to conclude that voting may be irrational, because voter power rarely outweighs the burdens of voting. If large voter participation is a mark of a healthy democracy , then our elected officials should consider remote blockchain e-voting as a solution. Blockchain technology is preferable to other methods of online voting due to its ability to promote trust, protect against duplication, and its security. A blockchain e-voting system could solve a number of problems that Americans face at the polls, including long wait times, voter intimidation, human error, and can solve voter identification problems. But, while blockchain technology is a viable solution, it is not perfect – and could create new problems, most notably voter privacy issues. This paper seeks to identify current trends and problems in United States’ elections, analyze blockchain technology as a potential solution to these problems, as well as identify areas where it may fail.

Bits or paper: Which should get to carry your vote?

This paper reviews several dimensions in terms of which electronic/Internet and paper voting can be compared (vote secrecy, verifiability, ballot box integrity, transparency and trust base). We conclude that, for many vulnerabilities of Internet voting systems, there exist related weakness in paper systems as well. The main reason why paper-based elections are perceived as more secure is historical experience. We argue that recent criticisms of Internet voting have unfairly concentrated on the associated risks and neglected the benefits. Remote electronic voting lowers the cost of election participation and provides the most secure means for absentee voting. The latter is something that is urgently required in the contemporary, increasingly mobile world. Hence, we need to give Internet voting a chance, even if it means risking unknown threats and learning by trial and error.

The normative grounds and technical conditions of the secrecy of voting in Polish electoral law in the first years after the “Round Table”

The normative grounds and technical conditions of the secrecy of voting in Polish electoral law in the first years after the “Round Table”

Cyborg political machines

Colombian professional political consultants couple information technologies and local political brokering to circumvent strict voter privacy regulations that limit campaigns’ access to voters’ personal data. I argue that political consultants use information technologies to bolster traditional vertical, personality-centered political organizations, and to produce tightly controlled “cyborg political machines.” I challenge widespread notions that oppose media-based politics to traditional face-to-face politics (known also as clientelism). Instead, I show that although political elites introduced American political marketing methods hoping to modernize campaigns, the American way provided a new framework to preserve traditional authoritarian political arrangements after the extensive democratic reforms of the early 1990s.

The risk to breach vote privacy by unanimous voting

The paper studies the risk that all members of a set of voters give their votes unanimously and thereby breach the privacy of the voting procedure. This problem becomes relevant in the situation that the voting behavior of a small (sub)set of voters can be identified by the way they transmit their votes, e. g., when at least two possible ways to give votes (like voting with ballot boxes, postal voting, and electronic voting) are admitted in theory but one of them is used by only a small minority of voters in practice.For the situation of a simple alternative between “yes” and “no” it turns out that as long as the probability of approval lies between 25% and 75% the probability of a breach of vote privacy by unanimous voting is smaller than 1% if there are at least 17 voters and even smaller than 0.1% if there are at least 25 voters. If, however, the rate of approval or disapproval increases, even to values already observed in reality, then the probability of such a breach of vote privacy can no longer be neglected. And even small values for the probability of a breach of vote privacy sum up when several thousands of these situations appear in parallel.Furthermore, if there is a three valued situation “yes” – “no” – “abstention” present, then, depending on the concept of vote privacy, a breach of it becomes considerably more probable even if the probability of approval remains within the boundaries mentioned above.