Wombat Voting Alon Rosen IDC Herzliya July 20, 2012
Amnon Ta Shma (TAU) Douglas Wikstrom (KTH) Ben Riva (TAU) Niko Farhi (TAU) Morgan Llewellyn (IMT Lucca) Jonathan Ben-Nun IDC Students: Tomer Gabbai, Doron Sharon, Shiran Kleiderman, Ido Bergerfroind, Asaf Gamliel, Daniel Rapaport, Omri Baumer, Asaf Inger, Eitan Grundland Project Participants
Electronic voting in Israel
The Israeli System
4 Years ago… Well, introducing computers will help us for sure * Meir Shitrit, Israel’s former Minister of Interior
Not what we hoped for... The design process was problematic: No public scrutiny No open design And, the resulting system was not satisfactory: No paper trail No transparency …
Why is this so challenging?
Secrecy vs. Verifiability Voting system convince Alice Carl the coercer
1.Alice verifies her vote. 2.Everyone verifies tallying. 3.Alice cannot be coerced by Carl. Desired Properties
Australian Ballot
Paper vs. Electronic Paper elections Local attacks Lacks transparency Electronic elections today Global attacks Undetectable Unrecoverable No transparency Ideally No local/global attacks Full transparency
What is Transparency? Anyone can verify that: their vote is cast as intended the votes were counted as cast
The Wombat Voting System
Simple design. Voter privacy. End-to-end verifiability. No need to trust the designers! Main Features
Objectives Easy to use. Versatile. Paper backup.
Public Ballots Alice Alice: Sweet Bridget: Sweet Carol: Salty Tally Sweet….2 Salty…...1
Encrypted Public Ballots Alice: Sweet Bridget: Sweet Carol: Salty Tally Sweet….2 Salty…...1 Alice verifies her vote Everyone verifies the tally Alice
System components Dual ballot Voting machine Polling station committee Public bulletin board Mixnet Vote
The Ballot אא
Voting Booth Vote selection Ballot printing Hardware – Touch screen – Printer
Polling Station Voter identification Vote casting Hardware – A desktop computer – 2D barcode scanner
Website (Hebrew)
Website (English)
Elections set-up
Voting
Simple and Familiar
Tallying Encrypted votes are mixed by the mixnet. Mixed decrypted votes and proofs of correctness are published in the Bulletin board. Paper votes may be tallied according to policy.
Auditing Auditing the machine (“cast as intended”): Audit by users using Android application. Random audit by designated auditors. Auditing the bulletin board. Android application. Validation of mixnet proofs of correctness: Built-in verifier. 2 Independent verifiers.
Verification (manual)
Verification (phone)
Behind the scenes Auditing the booth: cast-or-audit
Behind the scenes Auditing the booth: cast-or-audit Auditing the tally: Verifiable Mixnet
Elections with Wombat IDC Student council elections: May Meretz party chairman: February 7, 2012 IDC Student council elections: May
IDC 2011 Elections Non-profit college with ~6000 students. 28 different races. Students eligible to vote on multiple races students voted.
Some Statistics Voting took 1-2 minutes: 30 Seconds for voter identification 30 Seconds for scanning the ballot 579 voters verified ballot at bulletin board Students encouraged to verify with a coveted prize (2 x faculty parking spots).
Questionnaire 403 students answered an on-line survey. 78 answered a random exit survey. Students encouraged to answer by offering prize. High levels of voter satisfaction and confidence. The processes of folding ballots and validating votes should be improved.
Questionnaire “How satisfied are you with your voting experience?” “The Voting Process Was Clear and Simple”
Meretz Party Leader Party leader elected by party council consisting of 950 representatives. Highly diverse set of voters: Age (many over 50), gender, education, ethnicity… 830 (88%) voted. 23 voters verified their vote.
IDC 2012 Elections 2120 Students voted. Only 16 students checked their votes.
Difficulties & Lessons Technical difficulties: Electricity power loss. Printer hanging. Difficulties in folding the ballot. Mitigated by volunteers instructing voters before entering the voting booth.
Pictures
Website URL