Verifiable Voting System with Voter ID Receipts
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Solution Overview
Problem
Electronic voting machines lack a voter-verifiable paper trail, making it difficult to audit results and compromising voter privacy, as they rely on proprietary software that election officials may not fully understand or have access to, leading to potential errors and loss of public confidence in election legitimacy.
Innovation Solution
A voting system that provides a unique voterID on both the ballot and a detachable receipt, allowing voters to verify their votes by matching their selections from a set of non-matching options, while maintaining privacy by redacting individual voter information, enabling independent verification and audits without revealing personal voting information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a voter receives a receipt with an identifier to verify his vote, then vote verification is enabled, but voter privacy is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The ballot is divided into two separate portions: a vote casting portion submitted to the voting system and a receipt portion retained by the voter. This segmentation allows the voter to have verification capability through the receipt while the actual vote selections remain separated and anonymous in the tallying system, thus enabling verification without compromising privacy.
Solution Approach 2:
A unique voterID serves as an intermediary element that connects the voter to their vote verification process without directly linking the vote selections to the voter's identity. The voterID appears on both the ballot and receipt, allowing the voter to verify their vote was counted while the system uses this identifier only for matching purposes, not for revealing voting choices.
2Productivity
If electronic voting machines tally votes electronically without a paper trail, then voting efficiency is improved, but auditability is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a paper copy (receipt portion) that contains a copy of the voterID and serves as a verification token. This paper copy does not contain the actual vote selections but serves as an auditable record that the voter's ballot was processed, allowing independent verification of election results while maintaining electronic tallying efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The voterID is printed on the ballot before voting occurs, and the receipt portion is prepared in advance with verification instructions. This preliminary preparation enables post-election auditing and verification without requiring changes to the electronic tallying process, thus maintaining voting efficiency while enabling auditability.
3Device complexity
If proprietary software is used in electronic voting machines, then system complexity is reduced for manufacturers, but accessibility and understanding by election officials is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables election officials and voters to perform verification and auditing functions using simple, self-contained processes. The receipt portion provides voters with all necessary information to verify their own votes, and the published vote sets allow officials to conduct audits without requiring access to or understanding of the proprietary tallying software, thus making the system self-verifying and reducing dependency on manufacturer expertise.
Data Source
AI summary
In a transparent election system that protects voter privacy, the actual votes cast are published as a public record, with individual voter information redacted, allowing verification of the election results. A voter may verify that his votes were properly read and counted, to a high degree of certainty. The voter retains a receipt, including a unique voterID, from his ballot. During verification, using the voterID, the voter receives a plurality of non-matching sets of votes, one of which is his, without any indication of which one that is. If a voter does not recognize his set of votes, his marked ballot may be physically audited by voterID. A third party may verify the election results using these verification and auditing procedures on randomly selected ballots or sets of votes from a database.