Summary

Times are changing. More and more, our daily lives are critically depending on Information Technology. Election mechanisms are no exception. E-voting machines are replacing older paper and mechanical balloting systems, and internet voting is being considered for its convenience and promise of greater participation. Do we have to be concerned? With information technology moving into voting booths, we need to trust new generations of voting machines---both their hardware and their software. Are they properly developed, maintained, and resistant to tampering? Given the sheer complexity of these systems, it seems natural to be skeptical of the outcome of an election based on such systems. What can we do to increase confidence in the electronic-based election process?Trust is a complex concept, difficult to quantify and hard to achieve. Yet trust is a necessary condition for the legitimacy of the electoral process.

In this project, we try to understand the aspects and dangers involved in E-voting architectures. We design and implement an Internet based E-voting system. We need to collect what we consider as the most basic principles of an electory process, such as correctness, anonymity, secrecy, non-coercion. It will be an important part of this project to explain, reason, and test your implementation against those requirements.

Organization

Students may work on in different groups on different aspects of the E-voting system. Depending on how many students are interested participating in the process, we propose the following groups.

• Specification and Evaluation Group. This group is concerned with the definition of what an E-voting architecture actually is, which requirements it must satisify, and they will subsequently evaluate the system against the requirement document. This group will develop evaluation and testing methods.
• Database Design Group. This group will take responsiblity for designing the necessary databases storing keys, configuration data, and of course election data.
• Configuration Group. This group is responsible for designing the configuration part of the system in such a way that it satisfies the specifcation put forth by the specification and evaluation group.
• Election Group. This group is concerned with the processes at election day, including a graphical user interface. As for the configuration group, it is extremely important, that the group satisfies the specification put forth by the specification and evaluation group.

Report

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