We propose a new encryption primitive, commitment consistent encryption (CCE), and instances of this primitive that enable building the first universally verifiable voting schemes with a perfectly private audit trail (PPAT) and practical complexity. That is: – the audit trail that is published for verifying elections guarantees everlasting privacy, and – the computational load required from the...

How often will elections end in landslides? What is the probability for a head-to-head race? Analyzing ballot results from several large countries rather anomalous and yet unexplained distributions have been observed. We identify tactical voting as the driving ingredient for the anomalies and introduce a model to study its effect on plurality elections, characterized by the relative strength of...

Electronic voting may be a feasible option for several election environments, from closed-group elections to nation-wide elections. Especially with online voting, people will be able to cast their votes through a web browser, from their home or any other location where they can get Internet access. This paper reviews the generic cryptographic models that have been proposed in the academic liter...

Efficient post-election audits select the number of machines or precincts to audit based in part on the margin of victory (the number of ballots that must be changed in order to change the outcome); a close election needs more auditing than a landslide victory. For a simple “first-pastthe-post” election, the margin is easily computed based on the number of votes the first and second place candi...

Voter turnout statistics in elections across the United States reveal that political participation is too low. The United States Constitution was designed in a way to give the American people effective, elected representation at multiple levels. This can only be fulfilled if people actually turn out to vote. This study seeks to explain political participation at the city level. In city level po...

Justice and Development Party at the Helm: Resurgence of Islam or Restitution of Right of Center Predominant Party? by Ersin Kalaycıoğlu Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey Introduction General elections of July 22, 2007 witnessed a very rare occasion in Turkish politics. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had been in government since the November 3, 2002 elections managed to i...

Throughout the world, elections are being used in increasing numbers of nations. Conducting elections is seen as providing legitimacy to elected leaders, as long as they are conducted fairly and with integrity. But it also seems that along with the trends toward more elections around the world there are increasing concerns about electoral fraud and the potential manipulation of the electoral pr...

O 29 December 2006, the national elections commission, the Aceh Independent Elections Commission (KIP), announced the offi cial results of the governor elections in the Indonesian province of Aceh: Irwandi Yusuf, representative of the former rebel movement GAM, which fought for the independence of Aceh in a civil war lasting almost 30 years, emerged as victor. The elections on 11 December 2006,...

To win elections, candidates attempt to mobilize supporters and persuade swing voters. With what magnitude each operates across American elections is not clear. I argue that the influence of swing voters should depend upon change in the candidates across elections and that the consequences of changes in composition should depend upon the relative balance of campaign expenditures. I estimate a B...

Auctions and elections are seemingly disjoint. Nevertheless, similar cryptographic primitives are used in both domains. For instance, mixnets, homomorphic encryption and trapdoor bit-commitments have been used by state-of-the-art schemes in both domains. These developments have appeared independently. For example, the adoption of mixnets in elections preceded a similar adoption in auctions by o...