Remote Voting

Sometimes, voting in person is simply not desired. In these cases, the election must occur remotely. Remote voting is simply the act of people voting from remote locations. This is sometimes referred to as "online" voting. One example is overseas voting where prospective voters login to a remote system to vote. Another is where voting in person is not practical for sparsely populated rural areas.

The bad news is that there is no way to support a truly secret ballot when voting remotely because as soon as anyone logs in, the system knows who they are and can conceivably associate their identity with their completed ballot. In other words, how they vote is no longer a secret unless the administrator can be trusted to keep it that way. Even if so, the requirements for a truly secret ballot are permanently violated when voting entirely remotely. So much for "fully online voting" in Public Sector elections. Don't let anyone ever tell you that a secret ballot election can be held remotely - it is simply impossible. Full stop.

Does this mean that all elections can never be held fully remotely (on-line)? No, it does not. The good news is that a truly secret ballot is not always necessary. If the administrator of the election can be trusted to never reveal the potential association of a voter's identity with their cast ballot, then the requirement for a secret ballot can be relaxed by operationg the EIP protocol in a slightly degraded mode. This is a commonplace use of even highly private systems all over the world today in nearly 100% of commercial and government applications. We trust banks to keep our financial information secret and we trust the Social Security Administration to do the same with our SSN and other private data. All of these are remote systems. So it boils down to a question of risk. Overseas voters take this risk every time they vote. They don't really have any other choice, but you do. If your election requires secret ballots, then it must be held in person. If not, it can be held remotely in either an anonymous or an exposed mode.

Use Cases

• Anonymous Ballot Use Case

PROBLEM: Committee or board members need to vote anonymously to update by-laws on a continuing basis, but they are geographically dispersed and holding in-person meetings is impractical and expensive

SOLUTION: Hold a remote EIP election online operating in degraded mode using the Masked Voter Privacy Mode for anonymous participants

• Roll Call Ballot Use Case

PROBLEM: Publicly elected officials are voting on legislation. Constituants need to examine how they voted.

SOLUTION: Hold a remote EIP election online operating in degraded mode using the Exposed Voter Privacy Mode for public participants

Remote Voting Process

Before the election, ballot policy selection and credentialing must be performed. After the election, voters can audit the election by verifying the results and count the ballots themselves if desired, all without the assistance of anybody.

BALLOT POLICY

Determine the type of election to be conducted which may be conducted in person or remotely. Choices are:

1. Anonymous Ballot - Only the voter themselves and a trusted administrator can possibly find out how a voter voted.
2. Public Ballot (Roll Call) - Everybody knows how everybody voted.

CREDENTIALING

1. EIP creates a custom ballot for the election
2. A trusted Vetting Registrar (VR) is designated to run the election
3. VR sends EIP a list of the eligible voters to the VR, which is recorded in the EIP Voter Eligibility (VES) Ledger
4. EIP sends VR the same number of unique random logins, one for each eligible voter in the VES ledger. For Public Ballots, the voter is associated with the login, otherwise they are not
5. VR vets the voters before the election starts by issuing them login credentials. For Roll Call ballots, these can be issued in any manner. For anonymous ballots, these are dispensed randomly and idealy, anonymously. This can be accomplished via their email, a phone call, or online meeting presence (VR can know which voter has which login, but EIP does not).

VOTING

1. On election day/time, voter logs in and votes
2. Before logging out, Voter records their completed ballot (perhaps they take a picture of it).

AUDITING

1. After the election, Voter audits their vote by locating it using their Ballot Audit Mark - BAM and their ballot choices in the Cast Vote Record (CVR) Ledger online (or printed out). The BAM is a part of the ballot, simply a number attached to it.

Tradeoff when comapared to in-person voting with Secret Ballots

With remote voting, we are trading guaranteed vote secrecy for convenience. This does NOT mean that the voter's association to their ballot is comprimised, rather that relationship is kept confidential by the VR.