List:
In reference to the recent discussions on voting, I am
preparing a list of desirable properties of voting, as a
secure protocol. Of course, it may not be desirable or even
possible for a particular election process to include *all*
of them -- the objective is just to have a list of choices.
I include below the properties that I have found in the literature.
I feel however that some properties are missing, such as a
"complementary" property when voting is mandatory (in order to
use the absentee ballot to help detect the occurrence of false
votes in the actual ballots for each voting section). My list is
also not yet complete and I am further looking into a voting
model which would allow one to include other properties in
an analytical (formal) way. So, I would like to ask for list help in
adding to the known properties already proposed and listed below,
or improving upon them, or discussing/criticizing them.
This will also help, IMO, distinguish between those commercial
initiatives in voting products/services that comply to accepted
metrics (as given by known properties) or those that propose new
and useful metrics, from those that define self-serving metrics
or impossible metrics. Or, next, we might have the "Disappearing
Vote, Inc." ;-)
The current useful voting properties as proposed by Fujioka,
Okamoto and Ohta, 1992, and Benaloh and Tuinstra, 1994, are:
1. Completeness: All valid votes are counted correctly, if all participants are honest.
2. Robustness: Dishonest voters, other participants or outsiders can't disturb or
disrupt
an election.
3. Privacy: The votes are casted anonymously.
4. Unreusability: Every voter can vote only once.
5. Eligibility: Only legitimate voters can vote.
6. Fairness: A voter casts his vote independently and is not influenced (e.g. by
publishing
intermediate results of the election, copying and casting of the encrypted vote slip of
another voter as his own vote).
7. Verifiability: The tally can not be forged, as it can be verified by every voter.
The
verifiability is locally, if a voter can only check if his own vote if counted
correctly. If
it is verifiable whether all votes are counted correctly, then the verifiability is
universally.
8. Receiptfreeness: A voter can't prove to a coercer, how he has voted. As a result,
verifiable vote buying is impossible.
Cheers,
Ed Gerck
