Stamp-It: A method for enhancing the universal verifiability of E2E voting systems

Abstract

Existing proposals for end-to-end independently-verifiable (E2E) voting systems require that voters check the presence of a "receipt" on a secure bulletin board. The tally is then computed from all the receipts. Anyone can determine that the computation is correct-that is, the computation of the tally from the receipts is universally-verifiable. The fraud detection probability depends on the number of voters checking their receipts and the number of votes modified. This paper proposes an enhancement, Stamp-It, that does not require voters to check published receipts. It allows anyone to determine whether the tally is correctly computed, with probability independent of the number of voters who checked their receipt, extending the universal verifiability of the process. It does not require any additional computations to be performed during the election, and is hence very well-suited for use with the paper-ballot-based E2E systems. Finally, as an add-on, the enhancement does not degrade the original scheme. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.