Cast-as-Intended Verification in Electronic Elections Based on Oblivious Transfer

• Published in: Electronic Voting Vol. 10141; pp. 73 - 91
• Main Authors: Haenni, Rolf, Koenig, Reto E., Dubuis, Eric
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• ISBN: 3319522396; 9783319522395
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-52240-1_5

In this paper, we propose a new method for cast-as-intended verification in remote electronic voting. We consider a setting, in which voters receive personalized verification code sheets from the authorities over a secure channel. If the codes displayed after submitting a ballot correspond to the codes printed on the code sheet, a correct ballot must have been submitted with high probability. Our approach for generating such codes and transferring them to the voter is based on an existing oblivious transfer protocol. Compared to existing cast-as-intended verification methods, less cryptographic keys are involved and weaker trust and infrastructure assumptions are required. This reduces the complexity of the process and improves the performance of certain tasks. By looking at cast-as-intended verification from the perspective of an oblivious transfer, our approach also contributes to a better understanding of the problem and relates it to a well-studied cryptographic area of research.