Verifiability experiences in government online voting systems

Abstract

Since the introduction of verifiability in the online government elections of Norway in 2011, different governments have followed similar steps and have implemented these properties in their voting systems. However, not all the systems have adopted the same levels of verifiability nor the same range of cryptographic mechanisms. For instance, Estonia (2013) and New South Wales (Australia, 2015) started by adopting individual verifiability to their systems. Switzerland updated its regulation in 2014 to include individual and universal verifiability in order to by-pass the previous limitation of voting online up to 30% of the electorate. Geneva and Swiss Post voting systems are adapting their systems to this regulation and currently provide individual verifiability (and universal in the case of Swiss Post). In this exploratory paper, we study the different approaches followed by the election organizers that offer online voting, their current status and derived future tendencies.