Verifiable Voting Systems

The introduction of technology into voting systems can bring a number of benefits, such as improving accessibility, remote voting and efficient, accurate processing of votes. A voting system which uses electronic technology in any part of processing the votes, from vote capture and transfer through to vote tallying, is known as an ‘e-voting’ system. In addition to the undoubted benefits, the introduction of such technology introduces particular security challenges, some of which are unique to voting systems because of their specific nature and requirements. The key role that voting systems play in democratic elections means that such systems must not only be secure and trustworthy, but must be seen by the electorate to be secure and trustworthy. It is a challenge to reconcile the secrecy of the ballot with demonstrable correctness of the result. There are many general challenges involved in running a voting system securely, that are common to any complex secure system, and any implementation will need to take account of these. Over and above these, we introduce a particular approach to addressing the challenge of demonstrating trustworthiness, around the key idea of ‘end-to-end verifiability’. This means that every step of the processing of the votes, from vote casting through to vote tallying, can be independently verified by some agent independent of the voting system itself. In particular, the output of the system can be checked, and so the integrity of the election does not need to rely on the trustworthiness or competence of the system and its programmers, but can be demonstrated independently. ‘Individual