wombat voting
DESCRIPTION
Wombat Voting. Alon Rosen IDC Herzliya July 20, 2012. Project Participants. Amnon Ta Shma (TAU) Douglas Wikstrom (KTH) Ben Riva (TAU) Niko Farhi (TAU) Morgan Llewellyn (IMT Lucca) Jonathan Ben-Nun - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Amnon Ta Shma (TAU)
Douglas Wikstrom (KTH)
Ben Riva (TAU)
Niko Farhi (TAU)
Morgan Llewellyn (IMT Lucca)
Jonathan Ben-Nun
IDC Students: Tomer Gabbai, Doron Sharon, Shiran Kleiderman, Ido Bergerfroind, Asaf Gamliel, Daniel Rapaport, Omri Baumer, Asaf Inger, Eitan Grundland
Project Participants
4 Years ago…
Well, introducing computers will help
us for sure
Well, introducing computers will help
us for sure
* Meir Shitrit, Israel’s former Minister of Interior
Not what we hoped for...
The design process was problematic:• No public scrutiny• No open design
And, the resulting system was not satisfactory:• No paper trail• No transparency• …
1. Alice verifies her vote.
2. Everyone verifies tallying.
3. Alice cannot be coerced by Carl.
Desired Properties
Paper vs. Electronic
Paper elections• Local attacks• Lacks transparency
Electronic elections today• Global attacks• Undetectable• Unrecoverable• No transparency
Ideally• No local/global attacks• Full transparency
What is Transparency?
Anyone can verify that:• their vote is cast as intended• the votes were counted as cast
Simple design.
Voter privacy.
End-to-end verifiability.
No need to trust the designers!
Main Features
Encrypted Public Ballots
Alice:Sweet Bridget:
Sweet
Carol:Salty
TallySweet….2Salty…...1
Alice verifies her voteEveryone verifie
s the tally
Alice
System components
Dual ballotVoting machinePolling station committeePublic bulletin boardMixnet
Vote
glue
Polling Station
• Voter identification• Vote casting • Hardware
– A desktop computer– 2D barcode scanner
Tallying
Encrypted votes are mixed by the mixnet.Mixed decrypted votes and proofs of correctness
are published in the Bulletin board.Paper votes may be tallied according to policy.
Auditing
Auditing the machine (“cast as intended”):Audit by users using Android application.Random audit by designated auditors.
Auditing the bulletin board.Android application.
Validation of mixnet proofs of correctness:Built-in verifier.2 Independent verifiers.
Elections with Wombat
IDC Student council elections: May 17-19 2011
Meretz party chairman: February 7, 2012
IDC Student council elections: May 21-23 2012
IDC 2011 Elections
Non-profit college with ~6000 students.28 different races.Students eligible to vote on multiple races.2097 students voted.
Some Statistics
Voting took 1-2 minutes:30 Seconds for voter identification30 Seconds for scanning the ballot
579 voters verified ballot at bulletin boardStudents encouraged to verify with a coveted prize(2 x faculty parking spots).
Questionnaire
403 students answered an on-line survey.78 answered a random exit survey.
Students encouraged to answer by offering prize.
High levels of voter satisfaction and confidence.The processes of folding ballots and validating
votes should be improved.
Questionnaire
“How satisfied are you with your voting experience?”
“The Voting Process Was Clear and Simple”Very satisfied Satisfied Somewhat dissatisfied Very dissastisfied Don't know
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
Online surveyExit survey
Strongly agree Somewhat agree Neither agree or disagree
Disagree somewhat Strongly disagree0.00%
10.00%20.00%30.00%40.00%50.00%60.00%70.00%80.00%
Did not verifyVerified ballot
Meretz Party Leader
Party leader elected by party council consisting of 950 representatives.
Highly diverse set of voters:Age (many over 50), gender, education, ethnicity…
830 (88%) voted.23 voters verified
their vote.
Difficulties & Lessons
Technical difficulties:Electricity power loss.Printer hanging.
Difficulties in folding the ballot.Mitigated by volunteers instructing voters before
entering the voting booth.