By: Ludwig Forsberg & Harry Li

A design of a net-voting system for general elections

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to design a net-voting system where the voter submits his or her vote from home over the Internet. To achieve this a discussion was held on which requirements should be put on such a voting system and the justifications for these. The requirements discussed range from the preservation of secrecy, high usability and accuracy. Then these requirements are described in a more detailed manner and requirements such as everyone's right to vote, voter freedom and that the system is transparent are specified. By using these requirements an analysis is performed on the possible design choices that have to be made, like decisions concerning transportation of data, verification of data and authentication of voters. From this analysis the design is produced. The design primarily focuses on giving voters the possibility to verify his or her vote and to reduce the dependency on vulnerable components in the system. After this a number of attacks and weaknesses of the design are discussed. At the end of the report it's concluded that the aforementioned type of voting system addresses many of the biggest problems with today's voting system but also introduces new problems.