Electronic Voting, Spring 2020

Apr 03 notes and discussion

Part of the CS:4980:0004 Electronic Voting Notes
by Douglas W. Jones
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Department of Computer Science

Simple Verifiable Elections

As with Chaum's schemes, Beneloh proposes an election system where all votes are published in encrypted form. You can check that your vote is there on the bulletin board of all votes, and then the votes are decoded in a manner that prevents you from knowing which decoded vote corresponds to which voter.

Chaum's schemes gave each voter a tangible but encrypted receipt -- a paper ballot in the case of the various versions of Scantegrity. Beneloh moves away from the requirement for a paper ballot.

Helios

Helios is a practical implementatioin of Benloh's ideas as an Internet voting platform. It has seen wide use in such things as professional society elections.

Check out the Wikipedia page for Helios Voting, and you will find that it has several limitations and weaknesses. If you talk to Josh Beneloh today, he'll tell you that Helios is not suitable for government elections, and he'll suggest you use paper ballots.