25C3 - 1.4.2.3

25th Chaos Communication Congress
Nothing to hide

Speakers
Ulrich Wiesner
Schedule
Day Day 3 (2008-12-29)
Room Saal 1
Start time 12:45
Duration 01:00
Info
ID 3041
Event type lecture
Track Society
Language used for presentation en
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eVoting after Nedap and Digital Pen

Why cryptography might not fix the issue of transparent elections

Cryptographic methods have been suggested as a solution of the transparency and auditability issues in electronic voting. This talk introduces some of the suggested approaches and explains why such methods replace one issue with another, rather than fixing it.

Cryptographic methods like Three Ballot, Punchscan, Scantegrity and Bingovoting have been suggested to provide the level of transparency and auditability which is missing in Direct Recording Electronics (DRE), like the NEDAP systems used in Germany's parliamentary elections. These methods introduce a level of complexity into elections which prevents most voters from understanding the election process and its verification. Where elections are currently controlled by the people, trust in the ability of experts is required when cryptographic methods are introduced.

From a more technical perspective, where DRE systems require trust in correct recording and counting of the votes, cryptographic methods might just replace this by the need to trust in the secrecy of the vote.

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