A solution for Voter Verifiable e-voting in Ireland Verification by voter verified paper ballot

The essence of this proposal is that voters are given a printed copy of their electronic vote, which they verify before casting their electronic vote, and which they drop into a traditional ballot box. At the count centre an audit takes place in two stages. First, a random sample of paper ballots is taken from the ballot boxes and compared with the aggregated file of mixed and numbered electronic votes. Each electronic vote, and corresponding paper ballot have a unique ID which allows this comparison to be done. So long as all ballots selected for audit are the same on paper as in the electronic file, then this first audit stage is successful. The second stage of the audit, is to take the officially “certified” (as a result of the first stage of the audit) file of electronic votes and give it to an official observer, who verifies the official results by checking the count with an independent counting system. After the election, any interested party can check the count by using their own counting system to do the same. Figure 1. shows an overview of the processes and the sequencing of each step. Steps are indicated in a chronological order, and it is essential that each step be completed in that order. For example, it is critical that the electronic signature for the electronic vote file be published before the audit commences. Similarly, the random sample must be chosen before any of the ballot modules are loaded into the counting system.