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For centuries, we have taken democratic process for granted and placed trust in the paper ballot approach to casting and counting votes. In reality, the democratic process is one of considerable fragility. This was recognized at the dawn of democracy: the Ancient Greeks devised mechanical devices to try to sidestep the need to place trust in officials.
For over a century, the US has been using technological approaches to recording and counting votes, level machines, punch cards, optical readers, touch screen machines, largely in response to widespread corruption with paper ballots. All have been prey to various scams and forms of corruption or just plain malfunctions and have resulted in serious questions as to the legitimacy of the US 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In the last few years, the UK has been flirting with alternative voting technologies.
In this talk I will discuss the requirements for voting systems, such as universal verifiability, ballot secrecy and coercion-resistance. In particular, I will describe a cryptographic scheme, Prêt à Voter, which has the seemingly paradoxical property of providing voters with the ability to verify that their vote is accurately counted whilst still ensuring the secrecy of their ballot. Furthermore, this is achieved with minimal trust in the technology or officials.