ISSN 2319-8885
Vol.03,Issue.16
July-2014,
Pages:3460-3464
www.semargroup.org,
www.ijsetr.com
A Survey of Different Electronic Voting Systems
HTET NE OO1, AYE MOE AUNG2
1
Faculty of Information & Communication Technology, University of Technology, Yatanarpon, Cyber City, Pyin Oo Lwin,
Myanmar, E-mail: [email protected].
2
Faculty of Information & Communication Technology, University of Technology, Yatanarpon Cyber City, Pyin Oo Lwin,
Myanmar, E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: Secure and fair election is the vital role of a democratic nation. Every voting system, either traditional paper voting
or electronic voting needs to satisfy the required security properties. Among these properties, most important ones are
eligibility, fairness, privacy, receipt-freeness, verifiability and coercion resistance. Throughout the history, there are a lot of
electronic voting systems implemented in order to provide a more convenient and time saving than paper voting. This paper
renders a survey on various kinds of electronic voting systems with their strength and defects.
Keywords: Analysis, Blind Signature, Electronic Voting, Eligibility, Homomorphic Encryption, Mixnet, Verifiability.
I. INTRODUCTION
There are many different types of voting systems. Among
them the most general types of them are:
 Paper-Based Voting Systems
 Direct-Recording Electronic Voting Systems
 Public Network DRE Voting Systems
 Precinct Count Voting Systems
 Central Count Voting Systems
Paper-based Voting Systems (PVS): record, count, and
produce a tabulation of the vote count from votes that are cast
on paper cards or sheets. Some PVSs may allow voters to
make selections by means of electronic input devices. Voter
selections are, however, not independently recorded, stored
or tabulated by such input devices.
Direct-recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems: record
votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical
or electronic optical components which could be activated by
the voter. Such systems record voting data and ballot images
in computer memory components. Also, data processing is
achieved by the use of computer programs.
Public network DRE voting systems (PNDRE): Make use
of electronic ballots and transmit vote data from the polling
stations to other locations over a public network. The votes
may be transmitted as individual ballots as they are cast, or
periodically as batches of ballots, or as one single batch, at
the end of voting.
Precinct count voting systems (PCVS): put the ballots in a
tabular form at a particular place, say, a polling station. They
provide mechanisms that store vote count electronically and
transmit the results to a central location over public
telecommunication networks.
Central count voting systems (CCVS): Tabulate ballots
from multiple precincts at a central location. Voted ballots
are safely stored temporarily at the polling station. These
ballots are then transported or transmitted to a central
counting location. CCVSs may, in some cases, produce
printed reports on the vote count.
Electronic voting is the use of computers or computerized
voting equipment to cast ballots in an election. Sometimes,
this term is used more specifically to refer to voting that takes
place over the Internet. Electronic systems can be used to
register voters, tally ballots, and record votes. This paper is
organized as follows. Section two presents different types of
electronic voting schemes and their implementations. Section
three describes electronic voting systems around the world.
Section four explains the advantages and disadvantages of
electronic voting over traditional paper voting. The last
section will conclude the overall paper.
II. DIFFERENT TYPES OF ELECTRONIC VOTING
SYSTEMS
Using electronic voting instead of traditional paper voting
is now becoming a popular technology nowadays all over the
world. Advances in communication technology can make
geographically distant places to be closer and seamlessly
accessible. With the use of electronic voting technology,
people who are away from the voting booth as well as
physically infeasible to come to the polling station can also
cast their vote easily. Only the basic understanding to use
electronic voting machine or electronic voting web site is
needed. However, with the aid of new technologies, now
people can cast their votes even from their mobile phones.
Internet voting is one of the most feasible electronic voting
Copyright @ 2014 SEMAR GROUPS TECHNICAL SOCIETY. All rights reserved.
HTET NE OO, AYE MOE AUNG
systems. Internet voting can be divided into three general
The random number r conceals the ballot from the
categories as follows:
validator. The validator then signs the blinded ballot after
verifying the voter. The signed value is as follows:
 Poll-site Internet voting: It offers the promise of greater
(2)
convenience and efficiency in that voters could cast their
After receiving the validated ballot, the voter unblinds the
ballots from any poll site, and the tallying process would
ballot, to get the true signature, S of the validator for the
be both fast and certain. More importantly, since election
ballot, by computing,
officials would control both the voting platform and the
(3)
physical environment, managing the security risks of
A
major
problem
of
blind
signature
schemes
is
that
they
such systems is feasible.
require
anonymous
channels.
Sujata
Mohanty
and
Bashida
 Kiosk voting: Voting machines would be located away
Majhi proposed a secure multi authority electronic voting
from traditional polling places, in such convenient
protocol based on blind signature. In their scheme, bit wise
locations as malls, libraries, or schools. The voting
XOR operation was used for vote generation and blind
platforms would still be under the control of election
signature scheme for its authentication. Their proposed
officials, and the physical environment could be
scheme was secure because none of the authority involved in
modified as needed and monitored (e.g., by election
this scheme could have sufficient information to link a vote
officials, volunteers, or even cameras) to address
to corresponding voter. It was verified that the proposed
security and privacy concerns, and prevent coercion or
scheme met security criteria such as anonymity, verifiability,
other forms of intervention.
privacy, fairness and accuracy. The proposed scheme
 Remote Internet voting: It seeks to maximize the
consisted of four parties: a set of N voters, Authority of
convenience and access of the voters by enabling them
authentication (U1) which issued blind signature of vote to
to cast ballots from virtually any location that is Internet
legitimate voter Vi, Authority of Certification (U2) which
accessible. While this concept is attractive and offers
registered voters and an Authority of Publication which
significant benefits, it also poses substantial security
counted votes and publishes election result. The entire
risks and other concerns relative to civic culture. Current
process composed of three phases: registration, voting phase
and near-term technologies are inadequate to address
and counting phase. In their scheme, a voter could choose
these risks.
multiple options; therefore, their scheme could be used for
general election [3].
Electronic voting systems can be implemented on the
basics of three general schemes. These are electronic voting
In Fujioka et al. voting protocol [5] is one of the milestone
using blind signature, electronic voting using homormophic
proposals on e-voting area, especially on protocols based on
encryption and electronic voting using mixnets.
blind signature. In this protocol, there are two authorities:
administrator and counter. The administrator handles
A. Electronic Voting Using Blind Signature
Blind signature schemes have the feature of true two key
preparation and voting stages by interacting with voters; the
digital signature systems combined in a special way with
counter collects the votes, counts them and publishes the
commutative style pubic key systems. These are protocols
election result. Voter prepares a pseudonym (encrypted
based on “blind signatures”, introduced by Chaum in [6]. A
ballot) and sends it to administrator by proving his identity;
blind signature allows a signer to digitally sign a document
administrator checks the voters’ eligibility and blindly signs
without knowing what was signed. In a voting scheme based
the pseudonym and sends it back to him. Then, the voter
on blind signatures, the general idea is that the voter has her
sends his ballot via an anonymously communication channel
ballot blindly signed by the voting authority, and later
to the counter. The counter collects the ballots, counts them,
publishes the ballot using an anonymous channel. Although
and publishes the list. The voter checks his ballot in the list,
Chaum suggested the use of blind signatures for voting in his
and sends his key together with the ballot number to the
original paper, the first published protocol that makes use of
counter via anonymously channel. The counter decrypts the
blind signatures was by Fujioka et al. [5]. In electronic
votes with the keys and announces the result of the election.
voting, the signature is used to authenticate the voter while
This protocol satisfies some of the e-voting requirements but
keeping the secrecy of the content of a ballot. The function of
not all. Administrator just allows eligible voters to vote and a
the authority is to. verify the eligibility of a voter and so he
voter cannot use the pseudonym more than once. Hence,
will not know how the voter has voted for which candidate.
eligibility is achieved. Since the relation between the voter’s
In E-Voting, a ballot is blinded in order to achieve its
identity and his ballot is hidden by the blind signature
confidentiality requirement. A voter is required to get the
scheme, the voter’s privacy is preserved even if the
signature of a validator when he votes. To ensure the secrecy
administrator and the counter conspire.
of his ballot, a voter casts a ballot, B, blinds a ballot using a
random number and sends it to the validator. Let (k,e) be the
The voter sends his ballot as well as the key through
validator’s public key and (k,d) be his private key. A voter
anonymous channel, so no one can trace it back. Thus the
generates a random number r such that gcd(r, k) = 1 and
privacy is preserved. Anyone who gets to know the voter’s
sends the following to the validator:
pseudonym can easily find out his vote in the list published
by the counter at the end of the election. Therefore, the
(1)
International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Technology Research
Volume.03, IssueNo.16, July-2014, Pages: 3460-3464
A Survey of Different Electronic Voting Systems
receipt-freeness is not achieved. Counting of the ballots does
Dr. Mahmood Khalel Ibrahem and Nada Mahdi Kiatan
not affect the voting, as the counting stage comes after the
proposed a model of a web-based secure electronic voting
voting phase. So, fairness is achieved in this protocol. During
system with two new technologies; the first technique is
opening phase, voter can send illegal key or key can be
designing new zero knowledge authentication protocol, based
changed in somehow. According to the bit-commitment
on Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm, to ensure a
algorithms, changing key will not help getting a meaningful
mutual authentication between the election authority server
another vote, but will make the vote something meaningless.
and the voters. To ensure the security of the votes and
The change of key will not invalidate the sign, and cannot be
maintain the confidentiality, homomorphic encryption
verified or validated at any stage. This change of key can
scheme is used to encrypt all the votes and perform the
even be done via some active attacker. Furthermore, at this
calculation of the votes without revealing any information
point, a dishonest voter cannot be distinguished from a
about it. The proposed system provides secure voting over
dishonest counter. To prevent this, voter could send this key
the Internet and maintains all the requirements of the voting
to several parties, assuming parties of the election do not
process. To achieve the system robustness, flexibility and
collaborate. Hence, accuracy depends on authorities. Counter
resistance to potential change, the popular three-tier (layer)
publishes the election result as a list.
architecture was deployed in their system. The architecture
was composed of three layers: the user interface layer, the
application logic layer and the database layer.
The voter can check whether his ballot is on the list or not
and whether his key and vote pair has been added to the list
or not. Thus, the protocol is individually verifiable. If any
The proposed system consisted of three phases; the
voter proves that there is a fraud while verifying, then the
first phase was the registration phase that focuses on how
disputed votes are omitted. If the number of omitted votes
the citizen could be registered in the scheme with high
affects the result of the election, the voting process should be
level of security. Many of security properties such as
invalidated and election should be restarted. Since the
transparency, trust, eligibility, and privacy were assured in
claiming voter is allowed to register for the second time to
registration phase. The second phase was the voting phase,
obtain the new pseudonyms, at the counting stage, everybody
which was based on homomorphic cryptography techniques.
can know which votes were sent by the claiming voters. The
Privacy and confidentiality were assured in this phase. The
voter has to participate in three rounds: registration, voting
third phase was the counting phase, it consisted of two steps
and opening. After the registration phase, no voter abstains
counting and auditing, that counted and audited the votes for
from the voting. This is impractical. The protocol is not
each candidate. In this phase encrypted votes were counted
universally verifiable. If some voters abstain from voting
using homomorphic properties to assure accuracy,
after the registration phase, the administrator and the counter
verifiability, reliability, universal verifiability and fairness.
can conspire and they can add false vote to the list. To avoid
Convenience, flexibility and mobility were also
this failure, instead of using just a single administrator and a
maintained throughout the design of the system. The
single counter, more administrators and the more counters
system was secure against a stronger adversary, which
can be used [5].
could corrupt most of the system and can try to coerce
voters. The proposed system was a web-based application
B. Electronic Voting using Homomorphic Encryption
and hence it was flexible and mobile that allowed voters to
An encryption scheme is “homomorphic” if it is possible
cast their votes quickly, in one session, and with minimal
to perform implicit operation on the plaintext by processing
equipment and skills with no restrictions on the location from
the ciphertext only. The scheme is said to be “fully
which a voter can cast a vote [1].
homomorphic’’ when a sequence of operations (both
addition and multiplication) can be performed, whereas, it
C. Electronic Voting using Mixnets
is “somewhat homomorphic’’ if it supports a limited
The first published electronic voting scheme was proposed
number of operations. A function E is homomorphic if for
by Chaum [6], based on mixes. A mix is a device that hides
any x and y in its domain it satisfies E(x).E(y) = E(x + y).
the correspondence between its inputs and outputs by
The general idea of a homomorphic voting scheme is for
accepting encrypted inputs in large batches and mixing them
each voter to encrypt her vote using a public-key
before output. The most important goal of a mixnet is to
homomorphic encryption function, where the public key is
provide anonymity in communications, so it is a natural
published before the election. Each voter must prove that her
construction block to achieve anonymity in electronic voting
encrypted vote is a valid encryption. The encrypted votes are
systems, normally in submitting votes. This can be used to
summed using the homomorphic property of the encryption
hide the voter-vote relationship, allowing each voter to make
function. Finally, a set of trustees cooperate to decrypt the
sure her vote was counted (ensuring the integrity of the
final tally i.e. the secret key for the encryption scheme is
election) while preserving the secrecy of the vote. The
divided between the trustees. The advantages of using
building part of a mixnet is the mix server. Each mix server
homomorphic schemes are efficiency and verifiability: many
has the role of hiding the correspondence between its input
operations can be carried out on the encrypted votes, in
and output. There are two main approaches to create mixnets:
public, so they are both verifiable and can be performed
encryption approach and re-encryption approach.
during the voting process.
International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Technology Research
Volume.03, IssueNo.16, July-2014, Pages: 3460-3464
HTET NE OO, AYE MOE AUNG
argument was that the Commission was not convinced that it
would work. There are signs, however, that the Irish
authorities have not completely given up the idea of running
electronic elections. During 2005 initiatives have been taken
to run risk analyses and security analyses of their e-voting
system. It is unclear whether this will result in the provision
of e-voting options in the next election in Ireland.
Fig.1. A General Form of Mixnet with l mixes and n
inputs.
A general form of mixnet is shown in Fig.1, with l mixes
and n inputs, {EK(mj, rj)}, where {mj} are the messages and
{rj} are random strings. In a decryption mixnet, K is public
key of the mixnet, and output sequence {yi} contains
decrypted messages {mj}R in random order. In a reencryption mixnet, K is the public key of the receiver, and
the output sequence {yi} contains re-encrypted {EK (mj,r’j)}R
in random order.
Riza Aditya, Byoungcheon Lee, Colin Boyd and Ed
Dawson proposed an efficient Mixnet-based Voting Scheme
which provided receipt-freeness. In this scheme, the
administrator provides both randomization (ballot reencryption) and mixing service in the voting stage.
Afterward, the ballots were mixed using the proposed
efficient mixnet. Their proposed mixnet scheme used a single
encryption removing the use of double encryption and hash
checksum (3 encryptions). The first stage in this scheme was
vote casting in which sub stages are vote casting, ballot
publishing, DVRP and approval. The next step was mixing in
which the input ballots were re-encrypted and outputted in a
random order by the mix servers using the proposed efficient
mixnet. The final stage was tallying during this stage, votes
are tabulated by the talliers and the result is published on the
bulletin board. The two major problems of their scheme were
the trust assumption on the administrator and the possibility
of invalidation attack by mix servers, although any
misbehavior causing invalidation could be traced back easily
[4].
III. ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS IN
DIFFERENT COUNTRIES
A. Electronic Voting in Ireland
The plans were all set for e-voting by touch screens in the
Irish election for the European Parliament and their local
elections in June 2004. Test projects had been run in 3 out of
42 voting districts during the 2002 elections, in which 138
011 e-votes were submitted. The Evaluation Commission
appointed did not recommend the use of e-voting, however,
so all plans were stopped pending further notice. The
conclusion drawn by the Commission was not based on any
findings to the effect that the system would not work. The
B. Electronic Voting in India
Around 370 million Indian voters, (India has 675 million
voters), submitted electronic votes in the all-electronic 2004
general election, One million electronic voting machines
were distributed in a total of 800 000 polling stations. The
machine had the size of a suitcase and consisted of two units:
The control unit was administrated by the polling station
staff, while the balloting unit was placed in the polling booth.
The voters pressed the button next to a candidate’s name. In
addition, a symbol was provided next to the candidate’s
name. The investment of 800 000 voting machines amounted
to 200 million US dollars. But the authorities will save
around 10 000 tons of ballot paper for every future election.
To minimize risks of a virus attack or hacking, the machines
were not linked up to a network. Although the election was
rated as a great success by the authorities, several critical
questions were raised. The machines did not provide any
printed receipt, which means that there was no way the
results could be trailed. Another critical remark was that the
source code was not open for inspection.
C. Electronic Voting in Norway
Norwegian electronic voting system was mixnet type
voting system. Norwegian protocol included four players
representing the electronic poll’s infrastructure: a ballot box
(B), a receipt generator (R), a decryption service (D) and an
auditor (A). Each voter (V) could log in using a computer (P)
in order to submit his vote. Channels between computers
(voters) and the ballot box were considered as authenticated
channel, channels between infrastructure’s players were
untappable channels and channel between voters and receipt
generator was a unidirectional out-of-band channel. The
protocol can be divided in three phases: the setting phase, the
submission phase, where voters submitted their votes, and the
counting phase, where ballots were counted and auditor
verified the correctness of the election [2].
IV. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF
ELECTRONIC VOTING
A. Advantages of Electronic Voting
Electronic voting has many advantages over the traditional
way of voting. Some of these advantages are lesser cost,
faster tabulation of results, greater accuracy, and lower risk
of human and mechanical errors, it offers improved
accessibility for the people with disabilities, and it provides
multiple-language support for the ballots. Electronic voting
will increase voter convenience and voter confidence in the
accuracy of election results. Electronic voting can provide
convenient, efficient and secure facility for recording and
tallying votes. It can be applied for a variety of types of
election: from small scale campus election to large scale
national election. Timeliness can also be achieved by
International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Technology Research
Volume.03, IssueNo.16, July-2014, Pages: 3460-3464
A Survey of Different Electronic Voting Systems
electronic voting as computers have the capacity to record, to
and feel proud to mark their votes physically on a ballot. It
analyze, and to report the outcome of an election involving
will be difficult to convince eligible voters who are
many millions of voters in a matter of minutes, if not
comfortable with the current system to adopt a new one.
seconds. One of the benefits to online voting is larger voter
turnouts.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper presents the types of electronic voting systems
The major reason why eligible voters don't turn out is due
as well as different methodologies for electronic voting
to schedule conflicts, difficulty in taking time off work, long
schemes: blind signature scheme, homomorphic encryption
lines and the hassle of driving to the polls. E-voting
and mixnets. Moreover, various kinds of electronic voting
eliminates all of these hassles, allowing people to vote
systems in different countries around the world are also
whenever it's most convenient and from the comfort of their
mentioned. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of
own homes. There are many other benefits to electronic
electronic voting are described.
voting, like it being easier and more accessible to the
disabled with the touch screens. The touch screens provide
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
disabled people with hearing imparities, blindness and other
The author would like to express her sincere thanks to her
disabilities the ability to cast their votes without the
supervisor, Dr. Aye Moe Aung for very helpful and valuable
assistance of someone else or having to tell someone whom
guidance. Special thanks to her parents for all support
they wish to vote for. Another pro to electronic voting is its
throughout the life is also deeply stated. All the teachers who
simplicity. For current elections, just the voting process alone
had taught the author for every aspect are also very grateful.
it costs taxpayers worldwide hundreds of millions of dollars.
E-voting eliminates the need for voting staff, thus saving
VII. REFERENCES
taxpayers a great deal of money. Furthermore, the electoral
[1] Dr. Mahmood Khalel Ibrahem, Nada Mahdi Kiatan,
process online would eliminate the potential of double
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counting, miscounting and lost votes. Ultimately, this will
Voting System, 2012.
speed up the electoral process by making it more efficient.
[2] Véronique Cortier, Cyrille Wiedling, “A Formal Analysis
Not to mention, e-voting is more environmentally friendly
of the Norwegian e-Voting Protocol”, 2011.
because it eliminates the overwhelming amount of paper
[3] Sujata Mohanty and Bashida Majhi, “A Secure Multi
waste. The storage of the votes in an electronic voting system
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like is also much more feasible than paper ballots. These
Signature”, International Conferences on Advances in
votes are typically stored on smart cards, which make them
Computer Engineering, 2010.
more portable and easier to count especially if a recount is
[4] Riza Aditya, Byoungcheon Lee, Colin Boyd, Ed Dawson,
needed.
“An Efficient Mixnet-based Voting Scheme Providing
Receipt-Freeness”, Australia, 2003.
B. Disadvantages of Electronic Voting
[5] Atsushi Fujioka , Tatsuaki Okamato, Kazuo Ohta, “A
However, electronic voting has disadvantage of risk of
Practical Secret Voting Scheme for Large Scale Election”,
large scale and undetected fraud. Security is also one of the
Japan, 1992.
most important challenges in electronic voting. While
[6] David Chaum, “Blind Signatures for Untraceable
Internet voting might appear convenient and easy, issues
Payments”, 1982.
concerning security are a major concern. An abundance of
computer viruses and unpredictable malfunctions make it
Author Profile:
difficult to ensure that every computer voted on is safe and
Htet Ne Oo received her M.E (Information Technology)
protected. Computer issues aside, securing where the voting
degree from Technological University Mandalay, Myanmar
takes place online, in and of itself, presents a major
in 2009. This author is Research Training Fellow from NAM
challenge. Currently, hundreds of attack programs and
S&T Centre, India affiliated with CSIR-CSIO, Chandigarh in
viruses exist that when used could easily corrupt the online
2013. She is also pursuing her Ph.D in Information
voting network. Since it's so difficult to ensure security,
Technology at the University of Technology, Yatanarpon
perhaps online voting security issues are simply too risky.
Cyber City, Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar.
Electronic voting has less transparency in tallying than
paper voting. There are major social issues that people have
the right to be concerned about when it comes to online
voting. First, people have developed confidence in the
current system of voting because it's visible. People know
what to expect because the system is easily understood.
Online voting is a less visible method of voting and more
difficult to understand. In addition, not all people have access
to the Internet at their homes or are familiar with how to use
it. People have made a great tradition of driving to the polls
International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Technology Research
Volume.03, IssueNo.16, July-2014, Pages: 3460-3464