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Towards Improving the Efficacy of Code-Based Verification in Internet Voting

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Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 12063))

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Abstract

End-to-end verifiable Internet voting enables a high level of election integrity. Cast-as-intended verification, in particular, allows voters to verify that their vote has been correctly cast, even in the presence of malicious voting devices. One cast-as-intended verification approach is code-based verification, used since 2015 in legally-binding Swiss elections. We evaluated the Swiss paper-based polling sheet and voting interface, focusing on how well it supported voters in verifying their votes. We uncovered several potential issues related to manipulation detection. We improved the paper-based polling sheet and voting interface accordingly. Then, we carried out a between-subjects lab study with 128 participants to compare the original and improved sheet and interface wrt. usability and its effectiveness in supporting manipulation detection. Our improvements significantly enhanced detection. Our study delivered insights into participants’ somewhat ineffectual reactions to detected anomalies, i.e. starting over again and trying to cast the same vote again, or calling the telephone number provided by the interface. This problem is likely to manifest in any verifiable voting system and thus needs to be addressed as future work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This type of code is also commonly referred to as a check or return code in the literature.

  2. 2.

    For screenshots of the voting website and polling sheets for both of the evaluated systems, see https://secuso.org/code-based-supplemental-material.

  3. 3.

    Germany’s Social Democratic Party.

  4. 4.

    Participants were asked to cast a vote for a specific party to preserve ballot secrecy.

  5. 5.

    Cast votes were neither stored nor processed.

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Acknowledgement

This work was partially conducted within the Center of Information Security and Trust at the IT University of Copenhagen and also supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the Competence Center for Applied Security Technology (KASTEL).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Oksana Kulyk

  2. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Oksana Kulyk, Melanie Volkamer & Monika Müller

  3. Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland

    Karen Renaud

  4. Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

    Karen Renaud

Authors
  1. Oksana Kulyk
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  2. Melanie Volkamer
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  3. Monika MĂĽller
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  4. Karen Renaud
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oksana Kulyk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, USA

    Matthew Bernhard

  2. Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

    Andrea Bracciali

  3. Computer Science Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

    L. Jean Camp

  4. Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University, Washington, WA, USA

    Shin'ichiro Matsuo

  5. Western Sydney University, Parramatta, Australia

    Alana Maurushat

  6. Maison du Nombre, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Peter B. Rønne

  7. Dipartimento di Matematica, University of Trento, Trento, Trento, Italy

    Massimiliano Sala

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Kulyk, O., Volkamer, M., MĂĽller, M., Renaud, K. (2020). Towards Improving the Efficacy of Code-Based Verification in Internet Voting. In: Bernhard, M., et al. Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12063. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54455-3_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54455-3_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54454-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54455-3

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