Secure and Verifiable Election Systems
Abstract
This thesis examines the possibility of implementing a secure and verifiable election scheme using homomorphic encryption, based partly on the work of Benaloh and Tuinstra. After a brief overview of voting and the tradeoffs between privacy and verifiability, this thesis explores some cryptographic enhancements that would address these problems. The problems of strategic voting and voting paradoxes are also briefly looked at, and the instant runoff Borda Count is suggested as a remedy to these. The result is the description of a robust system that is implementable at Reed and scalable for use elsewhere in the world.