Proof of the possibility for a public audit of a secret internet voting system

Abstract

The aim of this study is to prove the possibility of building a system of secret Internet voting, in which a full-fledged audit is available to all voters and their proxies. A full-fledged audit should be understood as such an audit, in which everything that may be in doubt is checked. The open block of servers was created using Raspberry Pi 3 Model B type minicomputers, which are widely known and well-established. On the basis of an open block of servers, a full-scale model of the system for conducting experimental voting was created and a detailed methodology for a full-fledged audit was developed. This methodology provides for two stages of the audit. In the first stage, voters or their proxies must be present near the server unit. In the second stage, they continue the audit remotely through a dedicated server without losing information about the security of their data. For practical acquaintance with this research, the possibility of experimental voting is given. The experiment can be conducted by anyone at any time through a link on the Internet. Thus, it is shown that not only with traditional secret voting technologies, a full-fledged audit is possible, thanks to which voters have no doubts about maintaining the secrecy of their votes and the honesty of the results. To conduct a full-fledged audit according to the described methodology, it is not require to involve highly qualified specialists, but school education, which is mandatory in many countries, is quite enough. The importance of the results is that the lack of a full-fledged audit of Internet voting systems is the main factor hindering the development of e-democracy. The lack of public auditing of Internet voting systems causes distrust in the possibility of using the Internet to conduct fair elections