Wombat Voting

Alon Rosen IDC Herzliya

July 20, 2012

Amnon Ta Shma (TAU)

Douglas Wikstrom (KTH)

Ben Riva (TAU)

Niko Farhi (TAU)

Morgan Llewellyn (IMT Lucca)

Jonathan Ben-Nun

IDC Students: Tomer Gabbai, Doron Sharon, Shiran Kleiderman, Ido Bergerfroind, Asaf Gamliel, Daniel Rapaport, Omri Baumer, Asaf Inger, Eitan Grundland

Project Participants

Electronic voting in Israel

The Israeli System

4 Years ago…

Well, introducing computers will help

us for sure

* Meir Shitrit, Israel’s former Minister of Interior

Not what we hoped for...

The design process was problematic:• No public scrutiny• No open design

And, the resulting system was not satisfactory:• No paper trail• No transparency• …

Why is this so challenging?

Secrecy vs. Verifiability

Voting system convince

Alice Carl the coercer

1. Alice verifies her vote.

2. Everyone verifies tallying.

3. Alice cannot be coerced by Carl.

Desired Properties

1892 - Australian Ballot

Paper vs. Electronic

Paper elections• Local attacks• Lacks transparency

Electronic elections today• Global attacks• Undetectable• Unrecoverable• No transparency

Ideally• No local/global attacks• Full transparency

What is Transparency?

Anyone can verify that:• their vote is cast as intended• the votes were counted as cast

The Wombat Voting System

Simple design.

Voter privacy.

End-to-end verifiability.

No need to trust the designers!

Main Features

Objectives

Easy to use.Versatile.Paper backup.

Public Ballots

Alice

Alice:Sweet Bridget:

Sweet

Carol:Salty

TallySweet….2Salty…...1

Encrypted Public Ballots

Alice:Sweet Bridget:

Sweet

Carol:Salty

TallySweet….2Salty…...1

Alice verifies her voteEveryone verifie

s the tally

Alice

System components

Dual ballotVoting machinePolling station committeePublic bulletin boardMixnet

Vote

glue

The Ballot

א א

glue glue

Voting Booth

• Vote selection• Ballot printing

• Hardware– Touch screen– Printer

Polling Station

• Voter identification• Vote casting • Hardware

– A desktop computer– 2D barcode scanner

Website (Hebrew)

Website (English)

Elections set-up

Voting

Simple and Familiar

Tallying

Encrypted votes are mixed by the mixnet.Mixed decrypted votes and proofs of correctness

are published in the Bulletin board.Paper votes may be tallied according to policy.

Auditing

Auditing the machine (“cast as intended”):Audit by users using Android application.Random audit by designated auditors.

Auditing the bulletin board.Android application.

Validation of mixnet proofs of correctness:Built-in verifier.2 Independent verifiers.

Verification (manual)

Verification (phone)

Behind the scenes

Auditing the booth: cast-or-audit

Behind the scenes

Auditing the booth: cast-or-audit

Auditing the tally: Verifiable Mixnet

Elections with Wombat

IDC Student council elections: May 17-19 2011

Meretz party chairman: February 7, 2012

IDC Student council elections: May 21-23 2012

IDC 2011 Elections

Non-profit college with ~6000 students.28 different races.Students eligible to vote on multiple races.2097 students voted.

Some Statistics

Voting took 1-2 minutes:30 Seconds for voter identification30 Seconds for scanning the ballot

579 voters verified ballot at bulletin boardStudents encouraged to verify with a coveted prize(2 x faculty parking spots).

Questionnaire

403 students answered an on-line survey.78 answered a random exit survey.

Students encouraged to answer by offering prize.

High levels of voter satisfaction and confidence.The processes of folding ballots and validating

votes should be improved.

Questionnaire

“How satisfied are you with your voting experience?”

“The Voting Process Was Clear and Simple”Very satisfied Satisfied Somewhat dissatisfied Very dissastisfied Don't know

0.00%10.00%20.00%30.00%40.00%50.00%60.00%70.00%

Online surveyExit survey

Strongly agree Somewhat agree Neither agree or disagree

Disagree somewhat Strongly disagree0.00%

10.00%20.00%30.00%40.00%50.00%60.00%70.00%80.00%

Did not verifyVerified ballot

Meretz Party Leader

Party leader elected by party council consisting of 950 representatives.

Highly diverse set of voters:Age (many over 50), gender, education, ethnicity…

830 (88%) voted.23 voters verified

their vote.

IDC 2012 Elections

2120 Students voted.Only 16 students checked their votes.

Difficulties & Lessons

Technical difficulties:Electricity power loss.Printer hanging.

Difficulties in folding the ballot.Mitigated by volunteers instructing voters before

entering the voting booth.

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Website URL

http://www.wombat-voting.com