Security is the Heart of
any Election
Fair and democratic elections depend on strict and robust security measures that provide authenticated voters with secrecy, maintain ballot integrity, and allow for transparent auditability of all electoral processes. As private voting booths, ballot envelopes, and physical paper trails don’t exist in online elections, alternative security protocols have been developed to ensure secrecy, integrity, and auditability when using online voting technology.
Security is the Heart
of any Election
Fair and democratic elections depend on strict and robust security measures that provide authenticated voters with secrecy, maintain ballot integrity, and allow for transparent auditability of all electoral processes. As private voting booths, ballot envelopes, and physical paper trails don’t exist in online elections, alternative security protocols have been developed to ensure secrecy, integrity, and auditability when using online voting technology.
Reinforce Your Knowledge
Reinforce Your Knowledge
and the importance of every element.
can offer you and your voters.
technology’s security and efficiency with confidence.
Security Table of Online Voting
Security Table of Online Voting
Secrecy in elections means two things:
Privacy and Anonymity.
Privacy ensures that no unauthorized person gains access to the votes. It is provided in an online election through cryptography, or the practice of writing secure communication that only trusted parties can read and understand. Cryptography is used strategically in an online election to provide something analogous to a voting booth, allowing voters to select their choices without anyone else knowing what they are.
Anonymity guarantees that a ballot cannot be traced back to an individual voter and can be achieved through a few different methods in an online election, most often during the tallying phase. The most robust and secure processes are mixing and homomorphic tallying. As these processes both ensure that ballots cannot be traced back to the voters who cast them, much like a blank envelope in a paper-based election, the implementation of only one is necessary in an online election
Integrity in any election is founded upon the proper conduct of election processes.
Ensuring that votes are cast only by eligible voters, that those votes remain unmanipulated, that every voter casts only one ballot, and that electoral processes are easily auditable are all essential to the integrity of elections. Despite the fact that online elections involve numerous electronic processes that might seem invisible or hard to verify, the proper security measures can result in a transparent election with every step accounted for.
Election auditability is dependent on election transparency.
Auditability in an online election consists of both individual voter-level verification, in which voters verify that their ballots were cast correctly and included in the final count, and broader public verification, where independent third parties can assess the proper conduct of electoral processes and verify the final tally. These two types of auditability are known as individual verifiability and universal verifiability, respectively.
Authentication ensures online eligible voters can cast ballots.
Since voters do not have their IDs physically checked at polling stations in an online election, alternative authentication methods have been developed to ensure that only registered voters can cast ballots through the online portal.
Online voting systems are often compatible with authentication methods that are already in use, like electronic ID cards. When this is not possible, an authentication method is developed to best suit the needs of the election.
Infrastructure comprises the physical pieces of an online voting system.
Although the majority of online voting security measures rely on digital and electronic means, there are some very important pieces of physical infrastructure that are necessary for a secure online election.
Security Table of
Online Voting
Security Table of
Online Voting
Secrecy in elections means two things:
Privacy and Anonymity.
Privacy ensures that no unauthorized person gains access to the votes and is provided in an online election through cryptography, or the practice of writing secure communication that only trusted parties can read and understand. Cryptography is used strategically in an online election to provide something analogous to a voting booth, allowing voters to select their choices without anyone else knowing what they are.
Anonymity guarantees that a ballot cannot be traced back to an individual voter and can be achieved through a few different methods in an online election, most often during the tallying phase. The most robust and secure processes are mixing and homomorphic tallying. As these processes both ensure that ballots cannot be traced back to the voters who cast them, much like a blank envelope in a paper-based election, the implementation of only one is necessary in an online election
Secrecy in elections means two things:
Privacy and Anonymity.
Privacy can be thought of as a voting booth, or any method by which a voter can mark their ballot and have their decision known only to them. Anonymity, then, can be thought of as the blank envelope the voter puts their ballot in before casting it in the ballot box. Even though the voter identified themselves as an eligible voter, this envelope breaks all ties between the voter’s identity and their ballot, keeping their vote anonymous.
Secrecy in elections means two things:
Privacy and Anonymity.
Privacy can be thought of as a voting booth, or any method by which a voter can mark their ballot and have their decision known only to them. Anonymity, then, can be thought of as the blank envelope the voter puts their ballot in before casting it in the ballot box. Even though the voter identified themselves as an eligible voter, this envelope breaks all ties between the voter’s identity and their ballot, keeping their vote anonymous.
Secrecy in elections means two things:
Privacy and Anonymity.
Privacy can be thought of as a voting booth, or any method by which a voter can mark their ballot and have their decision known only to them. Anonymity, then, can be thought of as the blank envelope the voter puts their ballot in before casting it in the ballot box. Even though the voter identified themselves as an eligible voter, this envelope breaks all ties between the voter’s identity and their ballot, keeping their vote anonymous.
Secrecy in elections means two things:
Privacy and Anonymity.
Privacy can be thought of as a voting booth, or any method by which a voter can mark their ballot and have their decision known only to them. Anonymity, then, can be thought of as the blank envelope the voter puts their ballot in before casting it in the ballot box. Even though the voter identified themselves as an eligible voter, this envelope breaks all ties between the voter’s identity and their ballot, keeping their vote anonymous.
