1. The Italian Academic Community’s Electronic Voting System
Pierluigi Bonetti
Lisbon, May 2000

2. What is CINECA A Consortium of 15 Italian Universities
Mission: to provide the most advanced computing and networking services to universities and industries
Founded in 1969
About 150 full time researchers

3. CINECA resources Cray T3E - 256 nodes IBM SP/2 - 32 nodes
SGI Onyx2
SGI Origin 2000
SGI Challenge L-2
Gigabit backbone LAN
10+ Mbps connection to Internet
The first and unique Virtual Theatre in Italy

4. How Italian Universities recruit teaching staff
When a University offers a position, an evaluation committee is needed
Members of the committee have to be elected amongst all the teaching staff in all the Italian Universities belonging to the scientific discipline related to the position offered
Each offered position, therefore, requires a nation-wide election (!)

5. Complexity
Thousands of elections, each with a different list of candidates and involving many thousands of electors
Achieving this objective with traditional methods is impossible
The Ministry for University and Scientific and Technologic Research asked us to build
an Electronic Voting System

6. Requirements As in a traditional election:
Legitimacy: only those who have the right to vote can vote and can cast only one vote
Secrecy: no one can read the vote until the polling phase
Anonymity: the identity of the voter cannot be traced from the vote cast
Integrity: the vote cannot be modified once it has been cast
In addition:
Acknowledge receipt of each vote cast

7. The Electronic Voting System
A Central Electoral Office for voting authorizations
A Central Ballot-Box collecting votes
Many Polling Stations distributed all over the country and directly connected to the two central entities
Smart card based asymmetric cryptography

8. The Polling Station

9. Voting operations
The voter is identified at a Polling Station by an electoral committee
He receives a one time use personal secret code
He votes using a network terminal
The printer prints out a record with the name of the voter and periodic accounting on the number of voters

10. Polling operations
Each Recruitment Procedure Officer, using his smart card, gets the encrypted votes from the Central Ballot-Box and decrypt them
He determines the results, signs them with the smart card and gets them published on the Web in real-time

11. Polling Station software
A specific client in Java
No local data
Simple to use even for non-technical skilled people
Mouse use not required
Confirmation required before any critical action

12. The Certification Authority
Issues X.509v3 certificates for:
Polling Stations
Recruitment Procedure Officers

13. Global architecture The voting phase
Central
Electoral
Office
Issued Voting Authorization
Central
Ballot-Box
Used or Expired Voting Authorization
Voting Authorization +
Public-Key for encryption
List of Candidates +
Voting Authorization +
Encrypted Vote
Voter identification
Acknowledge of receipt
Polling Station
Voter

14. Global architecture The poll phase
Central
Electoral
Office
Central
Ballot-Box
Authorizes operation
Verifies credentials
IIdentification
Ecrypted votes
Polling station
Recruitment
Procedure Officer

15. Hardware CONTROL WORKSTATION CENTRAL ELECTORAL OFFICE ACCESS ROUTERS
BALLOT-BOX
Polling station x
Polling station y
CERTIFICATION
AUTHORITY
ISDN ROUTER
PRINTER
ISDN ROUTER
PRINTER
STATION 1
STATION 2
STATION 1
STATION 2
STATION 3

16. The Network Private ISDN network configured as a closed user group
Direct connection from each Polling Station to the central servers
Dial-on-demand with multi-link PPP
Caller ID verification
Centralized management of each network device

17. Security systems Votes are protected by:
Strong asymmetric cryptography based on smart card
SSL authentication with X.509v3 certificates
Digital signature of the Polling Station

18. RECRUITMENT PROCEDURE OFFICER
Votes flow
ENCRYPTED
VOTE
ENCRYPTED
VOTE
Polling station sign -
SSL
RECRUITMENT
PROCEDURE OFFICER
PUBLIC KEY
CENTRAL BALLOT-BOX
PUBLIC KEY
POLLING STATION
PRIVATE KEY
ENCRYPTED
VOTE
Polling station sign -
Polling phase
ISDN LINE
ISDN LINE
RECRUITMENT PROCEDURE OFFICER
PRIVATE KEY
CENTRAL BALLOT-BOX

19. Why is the system secure?
Authentication for both client and server
All communications are 1024 bit RSA protected
The intranet is not connected to the public Internet
Each vote is encrypted with the Recruitment Procedure Officer public key and signed by the Polling Station
No relation between the vote and the voter
Protection
against the system
managers

20. System certification
This solution has been checked and certified as safe
by a Technical Committee
on behalf of the Ministry for University and Scientific and Technologic Research

21. The first voting session in 1999 Some numbers
1969 elections and different candidate lists
42497 electors
79 Polling Stations in 72 Universities
209 Voting Stations
26873 voters (63%)
votes cast
Opening time for Polling Stations: 3 weeks
Average number of votes due by each voter: 6
Average elapsed time for each voter: 5 minutes
Average elapsed time from the beginning of the polling phase and the publishing of the results on the Web: 1 minute

22. Future extensions
A personal identity card for each voter instead of the one-time-use secret code
Polling Stations on the public Internet
Feasibility of voting from any PC
Other kinds of elections...

23. For any information