A cryptographic scheme for computerized general elections

Abstract

This paper presents a novel cryptographic scheme which fully conforms to the requirements of holding large scale general elections. The participants of the scheme are the voters, the candidates and the government. The scheme ensures independence between the voters in that they do not have to be present at the same time or go through several phases together; no global computation is needed. The scheme preserves the privacy of the votes against any subset of dishonest voters, and against any proper subset of dishonest candidates, including the government. Robustness is ensured in that no subset of voters can corrupt or disrupt the election. This also means that no voter is able to vote more than once without being detected. The verifiability of the scheme ensures that the government and the candidates cannot present a false tally without being caught. “Voting by telephone” is possible by employing the proposed scheme.