Receipt-Free Secure Elections

Abstract

A fundamental requirement for secure and uncoercible elections is the receipt-free property; if voters cannot prove how they voted to anyone other than themselves, then they cannot be coerced by a second party to cast a particular vote. We begin by describing a protocol for receipt-free elections that was developed by Benaloh & Tuinstra, and then show how this protocol, although correct, is impractical to implement. We then show how to modify this protocol to make it practical to implement. Our protocol requires the addition of an “uncoercible” third party who witnesses the execution of the protocol to make sure that it is executed correctly, but who does not learn the value of the vote.