Introduction
While the information and communication technologies are growing the last 10 years, even more people are using electronic means to communicate, to gather information or to make their transactions. To the accomplishment of these financial instructions, banks for instance made huge steps regarding the security of all those transaction and they convinced their customers for the safety of using electronic methods for their transaction. Nowadays more than 1.9 billion people worldwide and more than 475 million people in Europe have access to internet and a big percentage of them are reliable in using the internet, in order to make their financial transactions; even more people are requesting a remote voting process with the support of electronic infrastructure. All of these lead to the conclusion that only some technical and legal adjustments would be needed to provide a working way of e-voting.
E-Government and E-Democracy
According to…..E-government is a processing system familiar to those of business processes. The principals of these systems is to direct and to govern with the support of information and communication technologies using electronic utilities in the public sector as well as between the public sector and the population the economy, and the non-profit and non-governmental organizations". In connection with voting all the interactions between public sector and economy and the non -governmental sector is not of a great importance, that is the reason why only the definition of the European union regarding the public sector in this context is comprehensive: "E-government is defined as the use of information and communications technologies in public institutions in connection with organizational changes and the development of new abilities". The goal is to improve public services and democratic processes as much as simplifying everything regarding govermental politics. "E-democracy is a part of e-government, e-democracy and „summarizes all the actions where Internet technologies are used to grant additional democratic co-determination possibilities to the citizens.
E-voting
The best definition we can use to describe e-voting is the following: e-voting is the use of electronic means to accomplish at least one of the processes of the voters like identifying the vote or counting the votes.
The history of e-voting
The first ever electronic voting system was used on January 23, 1973 in the House of Representatives in the USA. But the history goes many years back. 1869 Thomas Edison filed a patent for his vote recorder and demonstrated the system to the congress. In Edison's system each legislator moved a switch to either yes or no position, thus transmitting a signal to a central recorder that listed the names of the members in two columns of metal type headed "YES" and "NO". From 1973 until the e-voting system suffered many upgrades and many other countries begin to e-voting system in elections.
In 2005 Estonian became the first country to offer internet voting system nationally in local elections, 9.317 people vote online. 2007 Estonia held the first general elections with internet voting, which was available from February 26 -28/ 30/275 and people had the chance to vote via internet. At the table below we can see the history of e-voting, remote e-voting system and major upgrades of the system.
Country
Year
Action
USA
1869
Thomas Edison vote record
USA
1973
Electronic voting System
USA
1975-1976
- Capability to establish and use retrieval categories that assist in the
analysis of House votes;
- Added display terminals in the rear of the chamber;
- Capability to retrieve historical vote information on display
terminals;
- Expansion of the issue information associated with each vote; and
- Modifications to permit other systems to operate on the vote
recording computers.
USA
1977
- Provided vote information from the House chamber standard display
screens for broadcast on the House closed circuit television facilities;
and
- Displayed information on issues under debate on display screens
USA
1978
Transferred voting data from the vote recording system immediately
after the vote to the summary of proceedings and debates system for
immediate dissemination on the Member information network.
D
USA
1981
Conversion of all vote recording software to more modern computer
equipment to improve the overall capabilities of the voting system;
- Speed of tally clerk printer increased; and
- Completed program modifications to provide GPO final vote results
on magnetic tape for direct photo-composition processing in the
Congressional Record
USA
1997-1998
Old vote cards, where each card was physically punched and a
reader read the holes in the card, were replaced with digital cards with
embedded chips.
Estonia
2005
First remote Evoting in local elections
Estonia
2007
First remote voting in national elections.
E-voting types
Electronic voting is already in use in many countries worldwide. There are three main types in use. These types are:
Paper - based E - voting system
Direct recording electronic systems (DRE)
Remote E-voting System (Internet)
Combination of these types.
Paper based E-voting System
In a paper based on e-voting system, a touchscreen is used in voting; after the voter has finished casting his votes, the unit prints out a hardcopy of the ballot which the voter has to pass to the election officer in charge so that it can be counted in a centralized location. The ballots will then be counted through optical-scan voting systems.
Direct recording electronic systems (DRE)
In the Direct Recording Electronic system, people are voting through a computer. The voters view ballots on screen and make choices using a touch screen, buttons, or a digital swipe card. In addition, the votes are stored on a memory card, compact disc or other memory devices. In accordance, election officials transport these memory devices to a centralized location for arrangement, just as they would with paper-based ballots. Some machines have the capability to broadcast results over a modem-to-modem line, though due to concerns about data security, these results are normally considered unofficial until they can be verified by organizing the results stored on the memory devices. Furthermore, many DRE devices also have the capacity to print a paper record of ballots cast.
Remote voting
In Remote Voting system, people voting via internet. People are using a username and a password, or national smart ID Cards that include microchip for identification. Then the vote transmitted to the voting system. After that the cast vote is transmitted to the counting system and finally the results are published. In the current study it will be explained how all these works and what we can do to make an internet voting system safe for the voters.
Combination of e-voting systems
A great number of counties are using a combination of the systems described above, such as a paper-based system and Remote Voting System, or a DRE system and Remote Voting System. Accordingly, the Remote Voting System is used mostly by countries for the oversea voters, the oversea military personnel and the diplomatic personnel.
Laws regarding e-voting
Electronic voting is already in use in many countries around the world and has proven to speed up the counting of votes as well as to improve turnout among disabled voters. Several countries however have expressed concern over the possibility that electronic voting can lead to massive electoral fraud. Because of these, the council of Europe has set up a committee which is preparing a set of European standards on the legal operational and technical aspects of electronic voting. Common standards on e-voting are key standards to guarantee the respect of all the principles of democratic elections. An e-voting system must be at least as reliable and secure as democratic elections which do not involve the use of electronic means, and that should be in compliance with the fundamental principles of democratic elections (universal, free, equal, secret and direct elections). Likewise, as long as e-voting is not universal available it should not replace the traditional way of casting paper ballot in polling station. It should remain an optional and additional channel. Only e-enabled voting systems which are efficient, secure, technically robust and readily accessible to all voters will build the public trust to such an extent as to make it feasible
to hold large-scale e-enabled elections.
In order to ensure the privacy and equality of suffrage, it must be ensured that only
Persons who are entitled to do so vote at an e-enabled election, no voter casts his/her
vote more than once, and each vote validly cast is only counted once when election
results are calculated.
The compliance of e-voting systems with secrecy requirements should be ensured
according to the following principles:
ô€¸ Any authentication procedure should be such as to prevent the identity of the
voter being disclosed to others;
ô€¸ Voters should be given access to particular electronic ballot boxes in a number
sufficient to protect the identity of any individual voter using the ballot box;
ô€¸ No ballot should be disclosed in any manner during the administration of the
election, or afterwards, that permits the voter who cast the ballot to be
identified..
Countries using e-voting system
Australia (polling place e-voting)
In Australia October 2001 was allowed for the first time during the Australian parliamentary elections. In that election, 16.559 voters (8,3% of all votes count) cast their votes electronically at polling stations in four places. Electronic votes could be cast two weeks before elections day for those who were unable to vote on that day. Australia decided that electronic voting should continue to be provided only at polling places using local area networks.
Austria Remote e voting
A first test of remote e-voting system was taken to the Student union lection at WU Vienna (vVienna University of Economics and Business Administration) in May 2003. A prototype was developed at the WU Vienna by prof. Prosser and his research group. The system implemented a remote voting procedure which was based on the Austrian electronic National ID card. Before Election Day the voter applied for issuing an electronic voting token, that was saved on the electronic National ID Card. On Election Day the voter to prove his right to cast a vote supplies only this electronic voting token. As a follow-up to this first test, the same project team conducted a second (legally non-binding) test of its system in parallel to the Austrian presidential elections of April 25, 2004. This time, 1.786 students out of a possible electorate of 20,000 students of WU Vienna voted electronically in addition to voting with their traditional paper ballot.
Belgium (polling place e-voting)
The first trials using e-voting machines in polling places were made in 1991. In 1994, the legal framework for e-voting entered into force and e-voting has been widely used in the general and municipal elections in 1999, 2000 and 2003. During regional and European elections on 13 June 2004, 3.2 million voters (20% of voters in Wallonia, 49% in Flanders, and all voters in Brussels) were due to vote electronically. As in the previous election of May 2003, electronic voting took place exclusively at the polling stations through a voting machine, which has a screen, a magnetic card reader and an optical pen.
Brazil (polling place e-voting)
In brazil the specifications for an electronic voting system where prepared at 1994 and in the elections of 1996 30% of the Brazilian voters were able to cast their votes with a DRE. The use of the DREs grew progressively from election to election and reached approximately the total of the voters. By the 2000 and 2002 elections more than 400 thousand DREs were used in Brazil and the results cast electronically minutes after the polls closed. Data was transfer on secure diskettes or via satellite telephone to central station.
Canada remote e-voting system
In the Canadian State of Ontario, from November 5 to November 10 2003, 12 municipalities from the Prescott Russell and Stormont Dundas & Glengarry Counties held the first full municipal and school board electronic elections in North America using either the Internet or the phone but no paper ballots. These elections included choices for mayor, deputy mayor, assistant deputy mayor, ward councilors and school boards members.
About 100,000 voters in 12 municipalities of eastern Ontario were registered to cast their ballots online or through the phone. Each of the 100,000 registered voters had received a Voter Identification Number and a password, allowing them to vote by Internet or touch-tone telephone. The e-voting system helped increase turnout to 55% in some places, against normal municipal election rates of 25 to 30%. After the elections, the Ontario Secretariat for Democratic Renewal was created to work on proposals for a reform of Ontario electoral process including to make the Internet a voting option.
Estonia (remote e-voting)
Discussions on remote e-voting started in Estonia in 2001 and one year later, in 2002, the legal provisions for it were put in place. During the summer 2003 the National Electoral Committee started the actual e-voting project. A public attaining procedure was carried out and the Estonian company Cybernetica Ltd. was instructed with the development of the e-voting system. The system includes the use of smart cards and electronic signatures. The software should be ready by autumn 2004. In late 2004 the first test of the whole e-voting system is supposed to take place during a consultative referendum in the capital city of Tallinn. The next test is planned for the local government council elections in October 2005.
India (polling place e-voting)
Since 1998 India using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in polling places. In 2003 all state elections using EVMs. India has over a 673 million voters and the use of e-voting system was obligatory.
Counties with e-voting system 2010 (DRE)
Countries with remote e-voting system 2010
Counties planning trials for e-voting
Counties where stopped e-voting
Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, United States of America, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela
Austria, Australia, Canada, Estonia, France, Japan, Switzerland
Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, South Korea, Sweden
Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom
Comparison between the e-voting systems
Each e-voting has advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages of a paper-based system is that the ballot is physically represented by piles of paper. This insures voters that their choice are be counted. A disadvantage is that the holes in a punch card may not be properly associated or fully punched and this has as a result the vote not to count. Other disadvantage is the printers that mark the optical scan cards can run low on toner, resulting in cards with incomplete or unreadable marks. Physical ballots can be lost or destroyed before count.
A DRE system can have major advantages over paper-based systems, assuming that it is secure and reliable (further explanations will be given in a section below). Furthermore, because ballots are displayed electronically, there are no limitations on a ballot's appearance. Programmers can create ballots in any language. They can design large print layouts for voters with poor eyesight or even record and incorporate audio files for blind voters. Election officials do not need to estimate how many ballots to order for each possibility; any particular format could be called up as situations arise.
Since votes are recorded on a memory device, arrangement takes less time. There are no paper ballots to scan, so there's less risk of mechanical error. While human error is still a factor and there is always a concern about software bugs; in an ideal system, arrangement is instantaneous with no need for recounts.
A major advantage of remote e-voting system is the opportunity to increase the participation of the voters; especially the participation of young people who are overall less likely to vote but they are comfortable in using the internet. No more long line at the polling station because the voters can cast their votes from their home or office. Additionally, voters with disabilities are having the opportunity to participate to the elections (text to speech). Internet voting also can reduce the cost of the elections, which means less poll workers, less poll station even more less paper. A further advantage is that with remote e-voting would allow military personnel and oversea voters to cast their votes. A disadvantage of internet voting might be that we must convince the voters that the system is secure, to ensure the anonymity of the user and that their vote can't be changed and manipulated.
Benefits for using e-voting system
As it can be understood from the tables above there are many countries that use e-voting system or will start to use in the next years. A number of questions can be arising. Why all these countries invest to e-voting? What are the benefits? Why they are trying to change the traditional election system with a new electronically system? The answer is simple as that, because they want to reduce the cost of the election and increase the participation of the voters. A good example can be the one in India. India is a country which has more the 672 million voters; if we imagine that the participation in the elections is near 100%, to be able to count the votes Indian will be need thousands of poll stations, thousands of people to work at the poll stations and thousands of papers for all these votes. All these increase the cost of election, as well as the time to count the votes and have the final result. With the use of EVMs India accomplish to reduce the cost and the time of the national elections
Section 2
Remote e-voting
The internet has transformed the way we live, communicate, and make our transactions. More and more people nowadays trust the internet for their communication by using the social networks, they trust the internet for their transactions like online shopping and online bunking. While even more people are using the internet in a daily basis, it is very easy to trust and use a remote or internet voting system
Remote internet voting is a system that allows voters to cast ballots from practically anywhere in the world as long as they have access to the internet.
How it works
A remote e-voting system consists from four part, identification, voting, counting and publication. The election administration system is the link between these four different system components. It contains the voter's register, the candidate list and the publication server. The first step is the identification of the voter. There are several deferent methods available like password/username combination, transaction numbers (TAN), digital signatures and biometric data. After the identification, the voter chooses the candidate and transmits the cast vote to the voting system which executes the vote integrity check. The vote transmitted to the counting system by which the system mixes and counts the ballots. Finally, the results are published, for example via the internet.
Requirements
A remote voting system must be similar to the traditional voting systems and must ensure that only registered voters participate in the voting process and that a voter can cast only ballot and it must further ensure the anonymity of the voter. The requirements of a remote voting system are:
Easy to use
The systems should be "friendly" to the users. Must be easy for the voters to learn and use the system
User's authentication
Authentication is very important to maintain overall security of the system. Strong authentications have to be implemented to give access to authorized users only and to exclude all the others.
Integrity
The integrity of the votes cast ant the entire voting system hardware and software should be maintained. The counting process of the votes should be produce correct results.
Voter anonymity
Voters should be able to cast their votes without being traceable as is in traditional voting process. The voting system should not link a cast vote to a voter. Failure of the voting system to provide anonymity would mean that interested parties could trace and know that someone did or did not vote for a given individual or policy.
Confidentiality of the vote
The system should maintain the confidentiality of the votes during and after the voting process
Systems components
Voters
Voters have the right to participate in the elections and they are register with the system
System administration
These are the personnel with the authority to operate the voting system. System administrators install and upgrade the system.
Client computers
These are end user terminals that are remotely connected to the voting servers over the Internet from which voters cast their votes.
Network infrastructure
This is mainly comprised of communications media that connect the internet service providers (ISP) to the client computer.
Voting server(s)
Voting servers are part of the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) of the voting system. A trusted computing base is that part of the system that is responsible for enforcing security policies
Voting protocol
The voting protocol is another key element in the system. The protocol governs the logic that handles security of the ballots, registration of users, authentication of participating parties, verification of votes cast and vote counting. We can as well say that the voting protocol is the heart of the voting system, without which all the designs are fruitless. The remote e-voting system requires a voting protocol that can guarantee confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of the votes.
Voting System Software
This is a crucial component of the voting system that has the actual implementation of the voting protocol and services that are needed in the voting process.
The Estonian Case
Estonia is the country that uses a e-voting system via internet. The possibilities of implementing e voting have been actively discussed in Estonia already since 2001. In 2002 the legislative basis to conduct e voting was created. In 2003 the e-voting project was initiated by the National Electoral Committee.
Legislative basis
According Estonian election the following requirements of e-voting are laid out.
"(1) On advance polling days, voters holding a certificate for giving a digital signature may vote electronically on the web page of the National Electoral Committee. A voter shall vote himself or herself.
(2) A voter shall identify himself or herself by giving a digital signature.
(3) After identification of the voter, the consolidated list of candidates in the electoral district of the residence of the voter shall be displayed to the voter on the web page. The opportunity for the voter to examine the national lists of candidates shall be provided.
(4) The voter shall indicate on the web page the candidate in the electoral district of his or her residence for whom he or she wishes to vote and shall confirm the vote.
(5) A notice that the vote has been taken into account shall be displayed to the voter on the web page."
Voter's authentication
Estonia for user authentication used a smart ID card. The card besides being a physical identification document has advances electronic functions that facilitate secure authentication and legally binding digital signature, in connection with national online services. Id cards are equipped with a chip containing electronic data, and certificates.
How Estonia e-voting works
It is important that e-voting could be explained as simply as possible to be understandable for voters. One way to simplify the complexity of e-voting is to draw parallels to ordinary voting. The e-voting scheme is similar to the envelope method used during advance polls today:
* The voter identifies himself/herself to polling commission,
* The voter fills the ballot and puts it in an inner envelope,
* That envelope is put into another envelope, on which the voter's data is then written,
* The envelope is transported to the voter's polling station, the voter's eligibility is verified, and if the voter is eligible, the outer envelope is opened and the anonymous inner envelope is put into the ballot box.
The e-voting follows the same scheme:
* The voter inserts the ID-card into a card reader and opens the homepage of the
National Electoral Committee,
* A relevant candidate list of voter's constituency is displayed according to the voters personal identification number,
* The voter makes his/her voting decision, which is encrypted and can be defined as inner envelope,
* the voter confirms his/her choice with a digital signature and the outer envelope comes up, voter gets a confirmation, that his/her vote has been recorded,
* at the vote count the voter's digital signature (outer envelope) is removed and at the final stage the members of the National Electoral Committee can only collegially open the anonymous e-votes and count them.
Public-key cryptography is used here. Application encrypts voter's choice with the system's public key and voter confirms the choice by signing it digitally. The votes are collected, sorted, voter's eligibility is verified and double votes are removed. Then the outer envelopes (digital signatures) are separated from inner envelopes (encrypted votes).
Inner envelopes are forwarded to the National Electoral Committee who has the private key of the system. Voter's choice encrypted with the system's public key can be decrypted only with private key. To ensure the voter's privacy the requirement is, that at no point should any part of the system be in possession of both the digitally signed e-vote and the private key of the system. In order to count e-votes, the system's private key is activated by key-managers according to the established key management procedures. The counting of votes takes place in the vote counting application, separated from the network.
The lists of voters who voted electronically are compiled from outer envelopes - from voter's ID-numbers. These lists are sent to local polling stations and on Election Day it is easily detectable if a voter, who has already voted electronically, comes to polling station to vote by paper ballot. In that case the polling station committee informs the National Electoral Committee and voter's e-vote shall be deleted.
Section 3
Design a remote voting system
As we saw in section 3, a remote voting system has 4 parts; the identification part, the voting, the counting and the publication part. For each one of these we will see what techniques have the advantages and disadvantages and which one of these are the best for our remote voting system
Identification
User's authentication is a major part of the remote voting system. If we won't convise the voters to trust our system we must insure that only authorized users can have access to our system. There are several ways to accomplish that.
Username/password
Using a username and a password is a simple way to use to authenticate the voters. The government or the election committee mailed to the registered voters a username and password. Furthermore, the voters use this username and password to login to the system and cast their votes. Is a very simple and low cost method, but has many disadvantages, such as that the envelop including the codes can be lost or It can be delivered to the wrong person. Another disadvantage is that it can be easy to outsiders to steal or change the codes.
Smart ID Cards
These cards can hold personal citizen information like name, address, age, electronic keys for digital signatures and possibly biometrics information such as retina scans or fingerprints. This is the best way for user authentication but it's too expensive way, since each voter must have a smart id card reader.
Digital signature
A digital signature is an electronic signature that can be used to authenticate the identity of the sender of a message and to ensure that the original content of the message or document that has been sent is unchanged. Digital signatures are easily transportable, and cannot be imitated by someone else. Furthermore, a digital signature can be used with any kind of message, whether is encrypted or not simply so that the receiver can be certain of the senders identity.
How it works?
Each person has two keys one public key and one private key. Public key is available to anyone who needs it, but the private key is personal. These keys are used to encrypt information. If someone wants to send a message he/she must encrypt the message with the public key of the person who wants to send the message, the person who receives the message must decrypt the message with the private key to be able to read it. For example, if someone wants to send to someone else a message he/she must encrypt the message with my public key and the other person must decrypted the message with my private key.
Remote e-voting and biometrics systems
Biometrics is the science that tries to fetch human biological features with an automated machine, either to authentication or identification. There are many possible biometrics properties that can be used for the authentication of an individual.
Fingerprints: fingerprint scanners are probably the most commonly used biometric system. Similar systems include hand geometry or palm prints.
Iris: Another property of individuals is the eyes. We can use either picture of the person's iris or a retina scanner that scans blood vessels to create an individual data set.
Face: the human face also can be used by biometrics systems. We can analyze the size and the position of different facial features such as the nose or the distance between the eyes.
Voice: every human has a unique voice. Everybody has a special mode and tone while speaking. Voice recognition tries to analyze these features and use them to identify a person.
Signature: Another behavioral aspect of a person usable by biometrical analyses is the signature. Not only the form but also the dynamic aspects can be seen as a set of unique features of a person. Other possible movable biometric input could be the rhythm and pattern of a person's walk.
DNA: Now this is a rather more theoretical idea for biometric identification. Imagine a DNA reader that can create a full DNA analysis within seconds from just a few cells of a person's body.
Multi Biometric Systems: As a final approach to biometric data gathering, one can combine two or more actual biometric analyses and combine their results. This combination yields better results than each of the combined analyses individually and thereby increases the reliability of the biometric system.
Even a biometric system isn't perfect many problems can occur. One problem is the
False reject Rate (FRR): is a situation where a valid user tries to authedicate and is falsely rejected by the system. This could happen for many reasons. For example we try to use voice recognition and we have cold this can have as a result changes in our voice tone, or due to an accident we burn out fingerprints or we have a new scar.
False Accept Rate (FAR): this means that an unauthorized person successfully accepted by the system. This user is able to vote and change the voting outcome and the actual user, that should be allowed to vote, is rejected because he/she has already gave his/her vote.
Finally, a major problem is the cost, since every participant must have a biometric reader, depending on the recorded characteristic these cost can be rather large.
Choosing a method
As we described above each system has advantages and disadvantages. The authentications or identification of the voter it's a very important for the remote voting system and the methods that we will choose must be unmistakable. Apart from that, the system must be easy to be used by the participants and with a low cost. Counting all these variables a multi biometric system increase the reliability of the system, but it's difficult to use and has a large cost. The username/password method has a low cost but it decreases the reliability of the system. The smart card id it's very reliable and easy to use but has a large cost. The better choice is a combination of a Tan method with digital signature because it's very reliable, user friendly and with a low cost.
System
High Reliability
Low Cost
User Friendly
Username/Password
x
v
v
TAN
v
v
v
Smart ID Card
v
x
v
Digital signatures
v
v
v
Biometrics
v
x
x
Ensure anonymity of the user
It is very important for a remote voting system to guarantee the anonymity of the voters. There are many ways to achieve that; we can do it in a pre- election period, during the election period and after the election period
Pre -election period: The most common implementation to achieve anonymity in pre-election period is the usage of a transaction numbers (TAN) system. The central election committee generates and sends randomly to the voters these numbers and each voter can use the number for exactly one vote.
During the election period: during this method the anonymity is established during the vote casting procedure. It can either be done by separating the servers in an identification and ballot box servers o by blind signature.
Blind signature
A common way to achieve anonymity is to use a blind signature. A blind signature, as introduced by David Chaum, is a form of digital signature in which the content of a message is disguised before it is signed. Blind signatures can guarantee that the election authority will not see the contents of any ballot.
Blind RSA signature
Named after its creators R. Rivest, A.Shamir and L.Adleman, the RSA cryptosystem is the most widely used public-key scheme. It may be used to provide both secrecy and digital signatures. Its security is based on the integer factorization problem.
The RSA algorithm works the following way:
Key generation:
1. Generate two large random distinct prime numbers p and q.
2. Compute n = pq and φ(n) = ( p - 1)( q - 1).
3. Select a random integer e, such that gcd(e, φ) = 1 and 1 < e < φ(n).
4. Calculate d = e-1 (mod φ(n) )
5. The public key is the tuple PU = { e , n }
6. The private key is the tuple PR = { d , n }
Encryption:
1. Obtain an authentic public key {e , n }.
2. Represent the message as an integer m where 0 < m < n.
3. Compute c = me mod n.
4. Transmit cypher text c to the destination with the private key.
Decryption:
1. Use the private key { d , n } to recover m = cd mod n.
Note that mod stands for the modulo operation.
Section 4
E-voting In Greece
In this section we will try to see hot if it is possible ta built un remote e-voting system in Greece. We will see how the current system works and what preparation the greek govermetn does to be able in the future to have an remote voting system.
Under the current electoral law of "reinforced proportionality", any single party must receive at least a 3% nationwide vote tally in order to elect Members of Parliament (the so-called "3% threshold"). The law in its current form favors the first past the postparty to achieve an absolute (151 out of 300 parliamentary seats) majority, provided it tallies about 41.5% of the total vote. This is touted to enhance governmental stability. The previous law (applied in the 2004 legislative elections) was even more favorable for the first party. The current electoral law reserves 40 parliamentary seats for the "first past the post" party or coalition of parties, and apportions the remaining 260 seats proportionally according to each party's total valid vote percentage. This is slightly higher than the raw percentage reported, as there is always a small number of invalidated or "blank" votes (usually less than 1%), as well as the percentage of smaller parties that fail to surpass the 3% threshold, all of which are disregarded for the purpose of seat allotment.
A rather complicated set of rules deals with rounding decimal results up or down, and ensures that the smaller a constituency is, the more strictly proportional its parliamentary representation will be. Another set of rules apportions the 40 seat premium for the largest-tallying party among constituencies. Individual seats are apportioned by "cross of preference". Voters mark a cross next to the name of the candidate or candidates they prefer, the number of crosses varying from one to five depending on constituency size. Ballots with no crosses or more crosses than allowed, count for only the party but not the individual candidates. Tallying is done manually in the presence of representatives of all contesting parties. Party tallying, which is easier, is done first so that returns may be announced quickly. Individual candidate tallying is done next and can take several days. Once the number of seats per party and constituency is determined, the seats are filled on a top-down basis from the individual cross-of-preference tallies. Party heads and acting or past Prime Ministers are exempt from cross-of-preference voting: they are automatically placed at the top of their party list and are elected, provided their party achieves at least one seat in the particular constituency.
Voting
Polling takes place in school buildings on a Sunday, a festive occasion for students who are then given a four-day weekend off. The procedure is run by a presiding judge or attorney-at-law appointed by the local Bar association, and secretarially assisted by local citizens selected by lot in a process resembling jury duty. Local police are available too. Local party representatives are allowed to monitor tallying; their theoretical role is to ensure transparency but in practice they are delegated the roles of ordering food for the exhausted crew.
Traditionally, voting takes place "from sunrise to sunset" but times are usually rounded to the nearest "top of the hour" (e.g. 7 AM to 8 PM). Individual precincts may prolong voting time at the judge's discretion, if there are still voters queueing up to vote. Voters identify themselves by their ID cards and are given the full number of ballot papers for the constituency plus a blank ballot paper and an empty envelope. Then they withdraw to a secluded cubicle equipped with a lectern, pen and waste basket, where they select the ballot paper of their choice, if any, and mark the candidate(s) of their choice, if any; they cast the sealed envelope with the ballot paper in the ballot box and are given their ID card back.
Voters may select specific candidates within the party list of their choice by marking a cross next to the candidate name or names. The maximum allowable number of crosses on the ballot paper depends on the number of seats contested. Signs other than crosses next to a candidate name may mark the ballot as invalid during tallying, as such findings may be construed to violate voting secrecy. Ballot papers with more crosses that the maximum number allowed, or without any cross, are counted in the total party tally but are disqualified during the second part of tallying, i.e. the determination of which individual candidate is elected to a seat already won by the candidate's party.
Once on-the-spot tallying is over and the tallies reported officially, the ballots are sealed and transported to the Central Election Service of the Interior Ministry. There ballots are recounted, mainly in order to ascertain the validity or invalidity of the few ambiguously marked ballot papers. Any unresolved matters following this recount are referred to the specially convened Eklogodikeion (Court of Election), which adjudicates and then officially publishes the names of elected MPs, so that the new Parliament may convene. The Court of Election may reconvene at any time in order to discuss appeals by candidates who failed to be elected, and also to fill seats that become vacant in the case of death or abdication of an MP. Such seats are filled by going down the preference tally of the party list that won the seat in the first place (there are no by-elections in Greece).
A peculiarity of the Greek Parliament is the suffrage given to Greek citizens permanently living abroad (about 7 million people).
Digital signatures
In greece the authority who is resbosiple for control and supervision of certification providers for electronic signatures is the EETT. EETT is the National Regulatory Authority, which supervises and regulates the telecommunications as well as the postal services market. EETT's institutional purpose is to promote the development of the two sectors, to ensure the proper operation of the relevant market in the context of sound competition and to provide for the protection of the interests of the end-users. EETT is an independent self- funded decision-making body.
EETT has create a trusted list with tha providers withc are campable to give a digital signature.
Statistics of elections.
As we disrobe at the previous sections one majore goal of the use of a remote e-voting system is the increase of the participation. In this part we will try to see how was the participations of the voters in the last three national elections, European elections, and local elections. As these givev by the government.(teble ).
National Elections:year
Register Voters
Vote
2000
9.372.541
74,96%
2004
9.899.472
76,50%
2007
9.918.917
74,15%
2009
9.933.385
70,92%
European elections
Year
Register Voters
vote
1999
9.555.326
70,25%
2004
9.938.863
63,22%
2009
10.014.795
52,54%
