Legal, political and technical considerations on electronic voting systems and the brazilian voting machine

Abstract

E-voting systems proved to be very fast to provide final results but very sensible issues arise on its security and transparency. This paper discuss what is expected from an political election, arguing about democratic principles to be followed, discussing issues related to information security and international experience, and presenting a brief report on some of auditing methods that were defined and executed by Brazilian High Electoral Court. As a conclusion, there is no way to hold an election that simultaneously meets these three requirements: a) anonymous votes; b) publicly auditable; c) 100% digital. The key for achieve security, secrecy and transparency is to abandon the use of 100% electronic voting systems, and adopt software-independent voting machines and paper auditing trails.