VoteXX: Coercion Resistance for the Real World (preliminary extended abstract)
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Date
2021
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Abstract
We solve the most challenging obstacle to casting votes online: “improper influence,” typically defined as vote buying or voter coercion. This problem has been the greatest barrier to mainstream adoption of online voting systems, whether the voter receives the ballot online or by mail. Our conceptual breakthrough allows each voter, or their trusted associates (which we call “hedgehogs”), to “nullify” (cancel) their vote in a way that is anonymous, unstoppable, and irrevocable. The separate
nullification stage requires fewer assumptions than do other approaches, thereby strengthening security and increasing practicality, while simplifying and speeding up registration and vote casting. Though our nullification technology can be readily applied to almost all types of elections for which the tally is publicly auditable online, its benefits are greatest for votes cast beyond polling places, where the threat of improper influence is most acute. It addresses current trends: elections are moving online despite the growing ease by which voters can be paid and coerced electronically. Nullification will help make it prudent to vote online, which is the type of voting advocates have long believed needed for democracy to reach its potential.