[E-voting] FW: Fraudproof voting protocols from scientists

[Michael McMahon]

Kieran Tully wrote:
> Interesting reading from yesterday's RISKS Digest on some new receipt
> based protocols, all of which claim to preserve the secrecy of the
> ballot. Haven't had a chance to look into the details, but I suspect
> at least one is still vulnerable to "vote signing" in a PR system.
>   
There hasn't been a lot of work done to study the "vote signing" problem 
as you call it
(aka the pattern attack, or "Italian attack"). This is largely because 
of the US focus
of most research where preferential voting systems are relatively uncommon.

Nevertheless, some work has been done. I did some investigation in that 
area myself,
using homomorphic encryption and it is definitely possible to do PR-STV 
securely, while
avoiding the pattern attack. Some work has also been done to extend the 
"Pret a Voter"
system to deal with this problem. I believe that a paper is going to be 
presented at a
conference later this month, on this topic.

- Michael