Towards long-term free and secret electronic elections providing voter-verifiability in the bulletin board model

Abstract

From a legal point of view, freedom and secrecy of the vote are as important as transparency and verifiability of the election. However, it is a challenge to reconcile the corresponding requirements for electronic voting schemes. This paper analyzes the link between individual verifiability on the one hand and anonymity, receipt-freeness and coercionresistance on the other hand. We approach the issue by analyzing remote as well as paper-based cryptographic voting schemes which make use of public bulletin boards. We investigate to which extent the considered protocols meet the above requirements, especially in the long term when computational assumptions may no longer hold. We also give ideas on how to improve the protocols in this respect. The paper aims at providing an overview in order to support election hosts such as companies, associations and government agencies in selecting appropriate e-voting schemes with respect to the priority of either freedom and secrecy of the vote or voter-verifiability.