Abstract
In this paper, we propose a new method for cast-as-intended verification in remote electronic voting. We consider a setting, in which voters receive personalized verification code sheets from the authorities over a secure channel. If the codes displayed after submitting a ballot correspond to the codes printed on the code sheet, a correct ballot must have been submitted with high probability. Our approach for generating such codes and transferring them to the voter is based on an existing oblivious transfer protocol. Compared to existing cast-as-intended verification methods, less cryptographic keys are involved and weaker trust and infrastructure assumptions are required. This reduces the complexity of the process and improves the performance of certain tasks. By looking at cast-as-intended verification from the perspective of an oblivious transfer, our approach also contributes to a better understanding of the problem and relates it to a well-studied cryptographic area of research.
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- 1.
This extended vote casting process is approved by the Swiss Federal Chancellery as a possible solution for the secure platform problem [BK113a, Appendix 7]. If there is a mismatch between any of the return codes, voters are instructed to abort the online voting process and to submit a paper ballot. In case of mismatched finalization codes, voters are instructed to contact the election administration for an investigation.
- 2.
The modified protocol as presented in [CT08] is slightly more efficient, but it fits less into the particular context of this paper.
- 3.
In the voting protocol presented in Sect. 3, which uses this \(\text {OT}^k_n\)-scheme to transfer return codes obliviously from the authorities to the voter, sender privacy is only required during vote casting. By revealing all n return codes at the end of the vote casting process, any attempt by malicious authorities to transfer incorrect return codes will be detected.
- 4.
Without such checks, malicious authorities could actively attack the vote secrecy of some voters by responding to the \(\text {OT}^k_n\) query with some incorrect return codes. If the voter then confirms the ballot as cast, the authorities learn that no candidate corresponding to an incorrect return code has been selected. A similar attack could be launched during the election preparation. If some of the random points \(P_{ij}\) are not selected from the polynomial, then responding with the correct value \(P_i\) tells the authorities that no candidate corresponding to such an incorrect point has been selected. In the covert adversary model, publishing s prevents both variants of this attack (see paragraph on vote secrecy in Sect. 4.1).
- 5.
Concatenation of voting and confirmation codes is the simplest possible solution to generalize the protocol to multiple authorities. As a consequence, the lengths of \(F_i\) and \(C_i\) are multiplied by t, which may cause problems from a usability point of view. A discussion of such usability problems and proposals for more sophisticated solutions are beyond the scope of this paper.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their reviews and appreciate their comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to Stephan Fischli, Severin Hauser, Thomas Hofer, and Philipp Locher for helpful discussions and proofreading. This research has been supported by the State of Geneva.
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Haenni, R., Koenig, R.E., Dubuis, E. (2017). Cast-as-Intended Verification in Electronic Elections Based on Oblivious Transfer. In: Krimmer, R., et al. Electronic Voting. E-Vote-ID 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10141. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52240-1_5
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