VoteBox: a tamper-evident, verifiable electronic voting system

Abstract

Commercial electronic voting systems have experienced many high-profile software, hardware, and usability failures in real elections. While it is tempting to abandon electronic voting altogether, we show how a careful application of distributed systems and cryptographic techniques can yield voting systems that surpass current systems and their analog forebears in trustworthiness and usability. We have developed the VoteBox, a complete electronic voting system that combines several recent e-voting research results into a coherent whole that can provide strong end-to-end security guarantees to voters. VoteBox machines are locally networked and all critical election events are broadcast and recorded by every machine on the network. VoteBox network data, including encrypted votes, can be safely relayed to the outside world in real time, allowing independent observers with personal computers to validate the system as it is running. We also allow any voter to challenge a VoteBox, while the election is ongoing, to produce proof that ballots are cast as intended. The VoteBox design offers a number of pragmatic benefits that can help reduce the frequency and impact of poll worker or voter errors. 1