Anonymity & Cryptology

Classical and Quantum Voting

Various properties have emerged as being desirable from the literature regarding classical secret ballot voting schemes. Amongst these is the concept of resilience which involves the properties of universal verifiability, privacy, and robustness. A universally verifiable election scheme is a scheme deemed open to scrutiny by all interested parties. Compliance with this property ensures that ballots are carried out correctly and that subsequent tallies are fairly assessed. From a scheme satisfying the privacy property an honest participant is assured that their vote remains confidential, provided the number of attackers does not grow too large. With the property of robustness an election scheme has the capacity to recover from faults again, provided the number of parties involved does not grow too large. Schemes satisfying these three properties are said to be resilient.

The concept of a receipt-free election scheme has also emerged as a desirable property particularly as a counter to the risk of vote buying/coercion. Receipt-free election schemes ensure that voters cannot prove, to other parties, the particular vote cast within the scheme. Further desirable properties, are to be found in the literature.

Voting protocols performed within a classical setting are in general grouped according to their use of: homomorphism, MIX nets and blind signatures.

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