A CASE STUDY FOR TURKEY: A SECURE PAPER-BASED ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM

Abstract

There are several electronic voting systems proposed in the literature either paper-based method, using voter’s computer and internet or direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine. These systems aim to satisfy the security properties like voter privacy, receipt-freeness, anonymity, verifiability, reliability, and usability. Besides, they mainly focus on the ballot tallying in order to solve the first conflict by achieving voter privacy and verifiability simultaneously. The most popular systems are based on homomorphic cryptosystems and mix-nets. These cryptographic evoting schemes require all voters to have an advanced knowledge of mathematics. This requirement may not be realistic for many of the ordinary voters. Some suggestions require voters to indicate their intent to some voting devices (e.g. DRE machines). Prêt à Voter scheme, which is invented by Peter Ryan, is also another type of electronic voting scheme which is similar to paperbased systems. Although its backend uses advanced cryptographic mechanisms it is simple to understand for any ordinary voters. In the Prêt à Voter scheme all ballot forms are generated by some election authorities in advance under the supervision of some audits. So, the authorities have the ability to read the voter’s choice directly from their receipts. In this paper, we first describe the Prêt à Voter scheme and its cryptographic primitives. Next, we investigate the efficiency and the cost-effectiveness of referendums in Turkey by providing a casestudy of the Prêt à Voter scheme. We conclude the paper by proposing the possible improvements and suggestions for Turkish elections.

Keywords

• Electronic voting, cryptographic protocols, Turkish elections

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