Helios: Web-based open-audit voting

Abstract

Voting with cryptographic auditing, sometimes called open-audit voting, has remained, for the most part, a theoretical endeavor. In spite of dozens of fascinating protocols and recent ground-breaking advances in the field, there exist only a handful of specialized implementations that few people have experienced directly. As a result, the benefits of cryptographically audited elections have remained elusive. We present Helios, the first web-based, open-audit voting system. Helios is publicly accessible today: anyone can create and run an election, and any willing observer can audit the entire process. Helios is ideal for online software communities, local clubs, student government, and other environments where trustworthy, secretballot elections are required but coercion is not a serious concern. With Helios, we hope to expose many to the power of open-audit elections. 1