Prêt à Voter with Paillier encryption

In a previous paper, a version of the Pret a Voter verifiable election scheme using ElGamal encryption and enabling the use of re-encryption mixes was presented. In order to ensure that the construction of the ballot forms mesh with the re-encryption mixes, it was necessary to draw the seed values from a statistical distribution, e.g., a binomial. In this paper we present a similar construction of the ballot forms but using Paillier encryption in place of ElGamal. The advantage of this is that the homomorphic properties of Paillier are ideally suited to our construction and removes the need to constrain the distribution of seed values. As with the scheme using ElGamal, we have a distributed construction of encrypted ballot forms. This enables on-demand decryption and printing of the ballot forms and so eliminates the need to trust a single authority to keep this information secret. It also avoids chain of custody issues as well as chain voting style attacks. © 2006 University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Printed and published by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Claremont Tower, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Bibliographical details