Practical pollsterless remote electronic voting

Abstract

This thesis describes the design of a novel class of pollsterless voting schemes. Many cryptographic voting schemes necessitate a pollster because the client side computations are beyond the understanding or ability of the voter. Such interactions require that the voter trust the software to perform operations on their behalf, and in effect, the pollster acts as the voter. Conversely, the pollsterless schemes presented here permit voters to interact with an election authority directly, without complex computations. Pollsterless schemes have the additional advantage of permitting voting on virtually any networked device, increasing the potential mobility of voting.

The proposed pollsterless schemes are implemented and then evaluated with respect to the particular requirements of the UK public election context. The flexibility of pollsterless schemes in particular are demonstrated to fulfill the diverse requirements that may arise in this context, whilst the mobility of pollsterless schemes is demonstrated to fulfill requirements to improve the convenience of voting.