On the Independent Verification of a Punchscan Election
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Date
2007
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Citation of Original Publication
Richard T. Carback III, Jeremy Clark, Aleks Essex, Stefan Popoveniuc, On the Independent Verification of a Punchscan Election, 2007 University Voting Systems Competition (VoComp 2007), https://web.archive.org/web/20110901175154im_/http:/vocomp.org/papers/punchscan-verification.pdf
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Abstract
Punchscan is a cryptographic voting system providing
full transparency throughout the entire election process: a
mandatory pre-election public audit, a mandatory post-election
public audit, and the ability for a voter to check the correct
printing and recorded marks on a paper receipt she keeps. Even
though a voter can verify that her vote is counted as she cast it,
the ballot receipt does not contain enough information to show
someone else how she voted.
These unique properties produce a system with a voluntary
and universally available process that establishes an overwhelmingly
high statistical degree of confidence in the integrity of the
outcome—in other words, they allow for unparalleled independent
verification of election results. These ideas are new and
have the potential to radically change the way we think about
and build the voting systems of the future.