Securing the Foundations of Democracy

Abstract

Recent events have highlighted numerous threats to democracy, in particular the 2016 US presidential election is mired in controversy. Allegations of Russian interference with the campaigns, in particular hacking and selective leaking of emails from the Democratic campaign management, possible hacking of electronic voting and tabulating. Alongside this we have challenges to democratic debate due to “fake news”, information bubbles, the chilling effect of mass surveillance etc. All of this suggests that we need to have a major rethink of how democracy should function effectively in the digital age. In a short article we cannot hope to address all of these threats, but rather we focus on just one aspect, arguably the keystone of democracy: making secure the conduct of elections. In particular we outline approaches to making elections verifiable and accountable, while guaranteeing ballot privacy and coercion resistance.