http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/11/25/213206.shtml?tid=103&tid=126&tid=172&tid=99meese writes "The cryptographer David Chaum, through discussion with top cryptographers such as Ron Rivest, has designed a
secure and verifiable voting system. One of the goals of his design is that anyone can verify that votes were tabulated correctly. It's good to see real security/crypto people working on this problem. They also have a
press release."
From the press release (
http://www.vreceipt.com/):
Receipts showing exactly who you voted for—just what people want and generally expect these days—have been outlawed to prevent vote selling and other abuses; now a scientist has come up with the first receipt that cannot be abused and additionally ensures that the vote you see on it is actually included in the final tally.
The new type of receipt is printed in two layers by a modified version of familiar receipt printers. You can read it clearly in the booth, but before leaving, you must separate the layers and choose which one to keep. Either one you take has the vote information you saw coded in it, but it cannot be read (except with numeric keys divided among computers run by election officials).
The half you take is supplied digitally by the voting machine for publication on an official election website. These posted receipts are the input to the process of making the final tally. A lotto-like draw selects points in the process that must be decrypted for inspection, but not so many points as to compromise privacy. Anyone with a PC can then use simple software to check all such decryptions published on the website and thereby verify that the final tally must be correct. Such audit cannot be fooled, no matter how many voting machines or other election computers are compromised or how clever or well-resourced the attack.
The cryptographer, Dr. David Chaum, known as the inventor of eCash and for his pioneering company DigiCash, came up with the system.
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