End-to-End Verifiable Voting System

Abstract

VoteFort is an End-to-End Verifiable Electronic Voting system that uses advanced cryptographic techniques to secure the elections. It allows the individual voter to verify his vote and ensures that the vote has been cast as intended, it has been correctly recorded in the voting system and the election result is correctly computed. VoteFort uses Homomorphic Encryption and Digital Signatures to secure the vote. At the start of the election, the homomorphic key-pair is generated. The public key is made open while the private key is divided among the trustees so that none of them is able to decrypt the vote individually. The voter’s choice is encrypted homorphically hence allowing arithmetic operations on the encrypted votes (ciphertext). The vote is also digitally signed thus authenticating the vote’s origin. The voting machines keep an offline copy of the encrypted votes (to be used in case of failure of the system) and issue a receipt to the voter that can be later used for verification. All the encrypted votes are also posted on a public website so that voters can match the ciphertext on the public website and the receipt. Same ciphertexts on receipt and website indicate a valid vote. At the end of the election day, all the votes are added homorphically i.e. without decrypting them, and then all the trustees use their private keys to decrypt the election results. After that, the results in both encrypted and decrypted form are made publically available on the website. Voters can download the encrypted votes, run a tally on them by using the public key and can compare their results with the ciphertext of the official result. VoteFort also allows the voter to challenge the voting machine before casting the vote, in order to check its correctness. VoteFort is better than Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and present voting system, i.e. paper-based voting system, in terms of security, robustness, efficiency, cost and reliability. VoteFort, unlike other voting systems or EVMs, uses off-the-shelf hardware and doesn’t have any special requirements. VoteFort is more resistant to errors, rigging and cyber-attacks than EVMs. VoteFort possesses key security properties that will help in preventing rigging and vote manipulation and will regain voter trust in our fragile democracy, which is an urgent need of the hour in Pakistan.