Publicly auditable privacy-preserving electoral rolls

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Agrawal, Prashant, Jhanwar, Mahabir Prasad, Sharma, Subodh Vishnu, Banerjee, Subhashis
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911929201590272
author Agrawal, Prashant
Jhanwar, Mahabir Prasad
Sharma, Subodh Vishnu
Banerjee, Subhashis
author_facet Agrawal, Prashant
Jhanwar, Mahabir Prasad
Sharma, Subodh Vishnu
Banerjee, Subhashis
contents While existing literature on electronic voting has extensively addressed verifiability of voting protocols, the vulnerability of electoral rolls in large public elections remains a critical concern. To ensure integrity of electoral rolls, the current practice is to either make electoral rolls public or share them with the political parties. However, this enables construction of detailed voter profiles and selective targeting and manipulation of voters, thereby undermining the fundamental principle of free and fair elections. In this paper, we study the problem of designing publicly auditable yet privacy-preserving electoral rolls. We first formulate a threat model and provide formal security definitions. We then present a protocol for creation, maintenance and usage of electoral rolls that mitigates the threats. Eligible voters can verify their inclusion, whereas political parties and auditors can statistically audit the electoral roll. Further, the audit can also detect polling-day ballot stuffing and denials to eligible voters by malicious polling officers. The entire electoral roll is never revealed, which prevents any large-scale systematic voter targeting and manipulation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_11582
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Publicly auditable privacy-preserving electoral rolls
Agrawal, Prashant
Jhanwar, Mahabir Prasad
Sharma, Subodh Vishnu
Banerjee, Subhashis
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
While existing literature on electronic voting has extensively addressed verifiability of voting protocols, the vulnerability of electoral rolls in large public elections remains a critical concern. To ensure integrity of electoral rolls, the current practice is to either make electoral rolls public or share them with the political parties. However, this enables construction of detailed voter profiles and selective targeting and manipulation of voters, thereby undermining the fundamental principle of free and fair elections. In this paper, we study the problem of designing publicly auditable yet privacy-preserving electoral rolls. We first formulate a threat model and provide formal security definitions. We then present a protocol for creation, maintenance and usage of electoral rolls that mitigates the threats. Eligible voters can verify their inclusion, whereas political parties and auditors can statistically audit the electoral roll. Further, the audit can also detect polling-day ballot stuffing and denials to eligible voters by malicious polling officers. The entire electoral roll is never revealed, which prevents any large-scale systematic voter targeting and manipulation.
title Publicly auditable privacy-preserving electoral rolls
topic Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11582