[E-voting] encryption compromised by hardware

[Patrick J Kobly]

Michael McMahon wrote:
> Patrick J Kobly wrote:
>> This is the huge assumption made by most cryptographers developing 
>> crypto-protocols for reliable e-voting.  The assumption is that the 
>> system the user interacts with acts as a faithful agent of the user 
>> with respect to encrypting, recording and displaying vote data.  
>> Thompson talks about why this assumption cannot be made (and in 
>> general any proof is illusory).
> Well, that is not true with respect to the  crypto based systems which 
> I have looked at.
> For example, David Chaum's system based on visual encryption
> (http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/voting/papers/Chaum-SecretBallotReceiptsTrueVoterVerifiableElections.pdf) 
>
Chaum's system falls under the exception that I identified earlier in 
the post - namely voter-verifiable audit mechanisms.  In this case, 
there is a physical artifact of the vote that is verifiable by the voter 
without the use of intermediary tools.

PK