A New Implementation of a Dual (Paper and Cryptographic) Voting System

We report on the design and implementation of a new cryptographic voting system, designed to retain the “look and feel” of standard paper-based voting used in our country, while enhancing security with end-to-end verifiability guaranteed by cryptographic voting. Our system is dual-ballot and runs two voting processes in parallel: one is electronic while the other is paper-based and similar to the traditional process used in our country. Consistency between the two processes is enforced by means of a new specially-tailored paper ballot format. We examined the practicality and usability of our protocol through implementation and field testing in two elections: the first being a student council election with over 2000 voters; the second a political party’s election for choosing their leader. We present our findings, some of which were extracted from an extensive survey we conducted during the first election. Overall, voters trusted the system and found it comfortable to use.