Online Voting Technology & Security

End-to-end vote encryption

Each vote is encrypted by voter's device (e.g. mobile phone, tablet or computer) before being sent to the digital ballot box. This means that even if a powerful attacker manages to intercept a vote, It would be impossible to read its contents. As electobox uses very strong cryptography to encrypt each vote - similar to what e-banking services use - it would be impossible for an attacker to decode the contents of a vote.

Multi-layer vote encryption

electobox's cryptography goes one step further and protects vote privacy not only against attackers but to all prying eyes. As the vote is encrypted on voter's device, It is impossible for anyone - included electobox itself - to read the contents of a vote.

This is achieved by having each vote encrypted using multiple cryptographic keys, which are held by the members of the electoral committee. electobox also holds a cryptographic key. This means that vote secrecy is ensured, as in order to violate confidentiality an attacker must have access to all cryptographic keys at the same time, including electobox's key. Therefore, confidentiality is practically secure, as long as only one cryptographic key is kept secure.

Vote integrity checking system

When a vote is cast to electobox, the system validates the vote without reading its contents (this is made possible since the vote has been encrypted on voter's device before submission) by checking a set of mathematical proofs generated during the encryption process. This allows electobox to verify that no invalid votes were cast accidentally, without compromising vote secrecy.

Digitally signed vote receipts to ensure votes are recorded as cast

After casting a vote, voters receive a digitally signed receipt from electobox ensuring that their vote was cast successfully. Once voting is completed, voters can verify that their votes are included in the ballot box and therefore in the final results by using the signed receipts.

Mathematically proven vote anonymization

Once the voting closes, electobox performs a cryptographic technique called mixing, which breaks the links between the encrypted votes and the voters who cast them. Vote anonymization is crucial for securing vote privacy. For that reason, electobox produces mathematical proof that prove the validity of the anonymization process. The proofs are pure mathematics and their validity can verified by any authorized party. Therefore, voters and election committee members can verify themselves that the process was performed correctly.

Distributed anonymized vote decryption

After vote anonmization is completed and the mathematical proofs are validated successfully, the votes are almost ready for tallying. However, votes are still encrypted. Anonymized vote decryption requires the collaboration of all election committee members. Each member of the electoral commission logs in electobox and by using their cryptographic key partially decrypts the votes. electobox also uses its own secret cryptographic key and partially decrypts the votes. Once the partial encryption is completed, all partial encryptions of the anonymized votes are combined and the contents of the anonymized votes are revealed. In order to ensure that all partial encryptions were done correctly, each partial decryption process produces mathematical proofs. Therefore, anyone can validate the generated proofs and be sure that all partial decryptions were done properly. The same applies to the process of combining all partial votes in order to reveal their contents.

Mathematically proven online voting procedure

As described by the previous sections, all election stages produce mathematical proofs that prove the correct execution of each action. Everyone can validate them and make sure that encryption, casting, anonymization, decryption and tallying has been done correctly. As the proofs are pure mathematics, if they validate, they leave no doubt that election integrity was secured.

Last but not least, the mathematical proofs do not reveal anything related to the identity of the voters or the contents of the votes. This means that the proofs can be shared with any external auditors without the fear of leaking information related to the votes or the voters.